Read the original article at Top MySQL DBA interview questions (Part 2)

Continuing from our Top MySQL DBA interview questions (Part 1) here are five more questions that test a MySQL DBA’s knowledge, with two that will help suss out some personality traits.

1. Disk I/O

Disk performance should be an ever present concern to a DBA.  So although they don’t need to be a storage specialist, they should have a working knowledge.  Ask them about RAID versions, mirroring versus striping, and so forth.  Mirroring combines two disks as a unit.  Every write is duplicated on both disks.  If you lose one disk, you have an immediate copy.  Like a tandem truck that has spare tires running …

Read the original article at The Mythical MySQL DBA

I’ve  been getting more than my fair share of calls from recruiters of late. Even in this depressed economic climate where jobs are rarer than a cab at rush-hour, it’s heartening to know that tech engineers are in great demand. And it’s even more heartening to think that demand for MySQL DBAs has never been better.

My reckoning was confirmed by a Bloomberg news report about stalwart retailers suffering from a dearth of talented engineers. Bloomberg cited Target’s outage-prone e-commerce site as a symptom of, among other things the market’s shortage. One of the challenges old-timers like Target face is having to compete with Silicon Valley startups as a …