What's the entry path towards a database administrator job?

Question

I've recently lost my job, and I'm working towards changing vocations. My degrees are in Mathematics, but I'm interested in IT, particularly working as a DBA or a programmer.

I don't have IT experience, but I have the resourses to be patient with the transition, and I'm currently learning SQL and Java.

Obviously, I need some job experience. My question is this: What entry-level jobs might allow me to gain useful experience towards obtaining a DBA job?

It seems to me that programmers often start as testers, and system administrators could start at a help-desk position, but it is unclear how one begins to work with a company's database.

Answer 1

I've blogged a lot about this:

• http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2009/04/how-to-get-a-junior-dba-job-part-1/
• http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2008/05/moving-from-help-desk-to-database-administrator/
• http://www.brentozar.com/sql/picking-a-dba-career-path/
• http://www.brentozar.com/becoming-a-dba/

Answer 2

I would volunteer to setup a database for a charity you are interested in. They may have a old MS-Access database (or nothing at all) that could be converted to MySQL. You can learn setup, conversion, and administration by doing something like this. And since MySQL is open source, the only "cost" would be the hardware to run it on.

That would give you some real hands-on experience that helps the charity while it simultaneously becomes something you can add to your resume.

Answer 3

Another approach is to start at a small company or organization. Smaller companies tend to have a single person IT department which allows (or requires!) many employees to pitch in and lend a hand. If you can get into the organization with another position then make it known that you want to learn database administration. There's a decent chance that the person currently doing the DBA work doesn't really want to and would be more than willing to let you take on whatever you can.

Once you have a toe-hold then hit the self-study/training classes route and build knowledge and experience. After some time you should have the experience/skills to pursue a full-time DBA position.

Answer 4

I think it's going to be hard to find a job where they will train you as a DBA. I'm not saying they don't exist, but they're few and far between and in great demand.

For what it's worth I would (actually I did :-) do the SQL MCSE's in your own time. If you can find an interim job where they'll pay for the training materials and exam so much the better. If you're really interested in being a DBA I wouldn't just use a "how to pass the mcse" book. Surf the web for all things SQL related and experiment. It's surprisingly fascinating (or is that just me :-).

If you can find yourself a secondhand Poweredge 440 or similar on eBay you can use Hyper-V to set up test servers and clients. This is particularly useful for playing with stuff like replication and log shipping. All the software you need is available as evaluation versions.

JR

Answer 5

Systems administrators or programmers can transition to being a DBA I think as follows:

Systems administrators are usually responsible for configuring servers and this can be mean optimizing the performance of database servers which requires some knowledge of databases and how they work and thus a sysadmin in a company that is the only one knowledgeable about DBs may be a DBA by default in that case.

The programmer transition is similar in that if one is the one man IT department then doing sysadmin work is part of the job and follows the above case.

A different route one could take is to be a business analyst or working with a reporting tool to get into how to use a DB to generate statistics and that could lead to being a DBA as one gets more comfortable with the tables and layout of the data in a DB, or data warehouse in the bigger places. The BA role is in gathering what data the users would want and being able to translate that a query to be used somewhere.