Lots of people who have “looking after databases” as part of their remit aren't actually database administrators. The task seems to fall more and more often to people whose expertise lies in other areas, such as systems administrators. I've noticed this particularly in organisations where everything’s running on Kubernetes, and the databases are seen as just another part of that landscape.

If you're in this situation, what do you do? Go out and learn to be a database administrator? Hope the databases will look after themselves? Panic?

A better option would probably be to implement one of the Kubernetes operators that have been created by database experts. The Operator not only knows how to do database administration but also how the database components interact with Kubernetes to get the most out of its features. It will automate everything from deployment of a high availability database environment to backup and recovery, monitoring and even upgrades.

Let’s have a look at what a Kubernetes database operator can do for you and what you need to look for when choosing one.