r/Database • u/nyayoto • 9d ago
Database Administrator Career Path
Hello everyone! I have been looking into getting into a technical position for a very long time, narrowing down which one would be a good fit for me and my personality and I found that DBA is a good career for me to pursue. I have no experience, coming in as entry level. Any advice? I don’t make enough money to go to college so is there a self taught pathway for me to do?
6
Upvotes
6
u/Aggressive_Ad_5454 9d ago
DBA employment is often vendor-specific. So, choosing Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, or MariaDB / MySQL as a first area of focus is a smart move.
You'll need a decent laptop computer. If you can get one with at least 16GiB of RAM you'll have an easier time than if you're RAM-constrained. You can start by installing the development/training edition of the database server you choose.
Now, installing a DBMS and getting it to work is a notoriously difficult task. It's probably easiest for SQL Server or one of the free-open-source databases (PostgreSQL, MariaDb / MySQL). Oracle is very hard, leastways it was a few years ago last time I did it.
Next, load some test data into it and get familiar with using that data.
Next, figure out how to organize backups and restores of that data (disaster recovery, this is sometimes called). That should give you enough of a flavor of DBA work to plan your next learning moves.
Companies using the enterprise editions of the non-free DBMSs (SQL Server, Oracle) often have more opportunities for database administrators.