Starting with self-proclaimed titles: DBRE
This is Yuta Kikai (@fat47) from the Service Reliability Group (SRG) of the Media Division.
#SRGThe Service Reliability Group primarily provides comprehensive support for the infrastructure surrounding our media services, focusing on improving existing services, launching new ones, and contributing to open-source software (OSS).
This article is about my first attempt at using DBRE.
What is DBRE?There is no clearly defined DBRE role within our company.I'll try acting as a self-proclaimed DBRE.Aurora MySQL Upgrade Knowledge Sharing ActivityAutomated documentation in MySQL environments improves development productivity.In conclusion
What is DBRE?
DBRE (Database Reliability Engineering) refers to the engineering role of improving database reliability and increasing the overall availability of the system. Compared to SRE (Site Reliability Engineering), DBRE is not yet as well-known, but its recognition is gradually spreading.
There is no clearly defined DBRE role within our company.
To my knowledge, there is no separate role or organization called DBRE within the CyberAgent Group. I don't think there are any dedicated DBAs either.
*I apologize if it actually exists and I'm simply unaware of it.
I belong to a cross-functional SRE team in the media business, and I mainly handle tasks related to MySQL. I'm not currently facing any particular problems, but I believe there are things to be gained by taking on the role of DBRE, so I've been focusing on DBRE-like activities since this year.
I'll try acting as a self-proclaimed DBRE.
Aurora MySQL Upgrade Knowledge Sharing Activity
This year, I was in charge of upgrading Ameba's Aurora MySQL database. I've summarized the details in the blog post below, so please take a look.
To share the insights gained from this upgrade with the organization, we have created a Slack channel within the CyberAgent Group where people can discuss Aurora.
Each business unit and subsidiary had an SRE or similar organization, and each was responsible for handling the Aurora upgrade. Therefore, this channel was used for sharing knowledge and as a consultation point.
Furthermore, I've been writing articles about newly acquired knowledge on the SRG portal blog, and I've written more than 15 blog posts in the past year. Several of these articles made it onto Hatena Bookmark's Hot Entries, attracting attention from many people both inside and outside the company. I hope that I've been able to contribute, even in a small way, to improving the reliability of the database.
Automated documentation in MySQL environments improves development productivity.
Ameba employs a microservices architecture, resulting in a large number of microservices.
As a result, many MySQL clusters are running, and there was a problem in that this information was not comprehensively documented.
Furthermore, even when documentation existed, it was often outdated and out of touch with the current situation. This led to problems such as delays in onboarding new developers and keeping up with new feature development.
Therefore, we have prepared an environment that automatically updates the table information and ER diagram of the running MySQL cluster.
The tbls configuration (yaml) file is managed on GitHub, and the Aurora MySQL password is retrieved from SecretsManager.
The generated HTML file is uploaded to S3, and users access it via CloudFront.
A rough diagram of the configuration looks something like this. Although not shown in the diagram, CloudFront uses OIDC authentication to restrict which developers can access it.
By running this process daily, we can now automatically access the latest data as a document at all times.
In conclusion
Having started out as a self-proclaimed DBRE for a year, I think I'm starting to see some results, albeit slowly.
I have many things I want to work on next year, so I'd like to take things one step at a time and work on improving database reliability and development productivity!
SRG is looking for new team members.
If you are interested, please contact us here.