Our colleagues are our strength. Thanks to their passion and knowledge, we can daily offer the best service to our customers. That is why we are proud of our team! Today we put Paul-Emmanuel Devadder, Senior DBA, in the spotlight.
8 years ago, Paul-Emmanuel started working for Zebanza and Exitas as a senior DBA. But he has been a database administrator since 1995. “More than 30 years ago, I started working with Oracle technologies. At first, I was a system engineer, but after a few years, I made the switch to database administrator. Nobody else wanted to do it at that time and it seemed like a nice challenge for me.”, Paul-Emmanuel explains.
“I worked in the Netherlands for a few years. There, I worked for Philips, who was a big customer. I managed no fewer than 600 databases located in 200 different datacenters!”, Paul-Emmanuel continues. “It was a difficult and challenging job. Especially because my team was not really open to new ways of working. I was the only one open to work with Windows for example.”
The switch to Open Source
You can say that Paul-Emmanuel has not been idle for much. He was very open-minded throughout his career and did not shy away from a challenge. Thanks to that mindset, he also gave the Open Source world a chance. “I started working at Exitas in 2014. I was still working with Oracle technologies. After a few years, I ended up on the bench for a moment. I don’t like doing nothing, so I used the opportunity to learn new things. I came across Postgres and I thought ‘Why not?’.” Paul-Emmanuel says. “Postgres was becoming more popular at the time. It was the third largest relational database management system. The lively and open community and the flexibility and scalability of Postgres appealed to me.”
Since Paul-Emmanuel made the switch to open source, he made the transfer from Exitas to its sister company Zebanza. Now he is responsible for 60 to 70 Open Source databases. “I check the state of these database. What is the replication status? Are there any issues? I basically check the health of the databases. I want to automate more of that in the future, but that is not an easy task.”, Paul-Emmanuel continues. “The current set-up that I made in Postgres is something that I am already proud of. Almost everything is automated with Ansible, especially for deployment. Now I can set up a server in 10 to 15 minutes.”
The possibility to grow
“I am proud of what I have achieved so far. My knowledge has really grown over the years and I want to continue learning and growing. Luckily, I get that chance at Zebanza. They are very open minded and offer their employees the possibility to achieve things. Are you not happy with the direction you are going? Then they will help you change the orientation of your tasks and skills.” Paul-Emmanuel emphasizes. “The colleagues are also really nice and we get some fun extras like afterwork events, free lunch, social getaways… I can really recommend anyone who loves being a DBA or is passionate about Open Source to work at Zebanza!”, Paul-Emmanuel concludes.
