What does a database administrator actually do?

I am currently working as a Senior Database Administrator for an International Travel Retail company. My previous DBA teams were with Alltel, Verizon Wireless and a small company called Insurance Management Services. Between those 3 companies I have 20 years of database experience with Microsoft Sql Server, Sybase, MySql DB2 and Oracle.

A simple answer is that a database Administrator (DBA) is a person who through tools and programming manages data. They will install the database software, setup the database management tools or create their scripts, usually bash or kornshell ( or powershell if on windows) to help them monitor database health, performance and storage usage.

You could be a DBA supporting a development team a Production Support DBA, or a hybrid of the 2. You could be on a Big Data team management a datawarehouse or in a retail business with live streaming transaction data. You will eventually plan for High Availability and Disaster Recovery. BI is heavily used these days and the call for Datawarehouse DBA's will be strong.

The job will require first and foremost, a bulldog like determination to keep investigating until you have found you answers. You will need to learn some types of programming (depending on your type of DBA role) but definitely, SQL, Korn Shell/Bash, maybe Powershell. You may have to learn Java. I myself started programming with Cobol, went into hardware, then networking, then LAN/WAN and then into databases. My home is databases. You can be a good troubleshooter if you know about programming, data structures, lan/wan, networking ,etc You can "get" the big picture from end to end.

Database Administration is a great field. Good Luck! If you don't go into that , get into Data Science !

Some good descriptions above...just a couple things to add...

The running joke in the industry is that DBA stands for "default blame acceptor". Seriously though, what this eludes to is the fact that it's typically a very important and visible role in IT. Since most business systems rely on a database of some sort when there are issues with it, the DBA is one of the first people they seek out. So a good one is invaluable and a bad one can bring a company to it's knees. Good ones keep systems running when they are otherwise poorly designed and unreliable, bad ones can cause outages and/or data loss. Good troubleshooting skills are a huge asset.

Installation, configuration, upgrade, and migration Although system administrators are generally responsible for the hardware and operating system on a given server, installation of the database software is typically up to the DBA. This job role requires knowledge of the hardware prerequisites for an efficient database server, and communicating those requirements to the system administrator. The DBA then installs the database software and selects from various options in the product to configure it for the purpose it is being deployed. As new releases and patches are developed, it's the DBA's job to decide which are appropriate and to install them. If the server is a replacement for an existing one, it's the DBA's job to get the data from the old server to the new one.

A Database Administrator (DBA) is responsible for ensuring the database behind the product is operating correctly. This involves ensuring it is performant (responsive), can handle increasing workload (more customers or activity), can grow (storage). They ensure it is not corrupted (maintain the referential integrity between objects in the database) and handle corruptions if/when it does occur (backing it up and restoring). They advise other developers about best practices for upgrade and how the objects are wired together (entity relationships). They automate many of these practices so that they can handle many 100s of databases. Sometimes, DBAs function as part of a development team, and sometimes they are isolated and independent.

Hope that is helpful,
Lionel