As a long time DBA I am always reviewing the new features which the main commercial database vendors such as Oracle, Microsoft and IBM are adding to their versions, as well as the big free/Open source database vendors such as MySQL and PostgreSQL.
While most hardcore geeks have plenty of older PCs available to use as Linux, or Windows platforms for playing with the new versions, getting time within a busy schedule of work, family, rest and play means that most DBAs have to rely on work time and resources to get exposed to the features.
Lots of the database vendors are making it progressively easier to download VMs (Virtual Machines) to play. Though not all are ready to use straight away.
We are looking at making that easier. Using Amazon EC2 virtual instances, we provide a range of VMs at various stages of installation and configuration points.
For example, if you are wanting to use MySQL NDB cluster databases out of the box to see what the various ndb_mgm commands return, we provide the MySQL NDB cluster prebuilt.
Whereas if you want to learn how to install a MySQL NDB we can provide the blank machine with the files downloaded ready to follow either the MySQL documentation or a shorter recipe.
On the other side of the coin, getting practice for various migrations both within an vendor's version set or from one vendor to another is again hard to justify from a work perspective. Even if you have the machine and time resource, hard to determine the length of time to setup and test.
Again we can provide various VMs ready to test the steps required.
We aren't quite ready to launch just yet, but are getting close. Please check back frequently here for further updates and our co-blog DBADOJO which covers more specific technical details.
Cheers
Paul
