Brett Garland

About Brett Garland

I have been a database administrator since 1997, as well as a data architect, data analyst and even the sole programmer at various points in time. Over the years, I have primarily been involved with Open Source projects such as MySQL, Linux, Apache, PHP, Perl, and MongoDB. For the last few years I\'ve been working mostly with AWS RDS / Aurora MySQL, AWS RDS / Aurora Postgres and AWS RDS Oracle.I have an MBA degree with a concentration in Marketing and Economics as well as a BA degree in Business Management and a BS degree in Economics which allows me to straddle both the IT world and the business world. I have a knack for clearing up issues and fostering communications between business and IT units.I believe you need to love what you do to make the most of your life and I love my work. I enjoy tuning my database servers, applications and queries to make them perform to their best. I get a thrill out of writing a new piece of code that does something cool such as parsing data to find little nuggets of interesting data. I enjoy working with queries that take 100s (or of seconds to run and make them run in under 10 seconds. I enjoy analyzing schemas to ensure that the data is in the right place. I have fun with these investigations. And that’s why I love my work, because I find it interesting and enjoyable. I enjoy digging into new technologies and learning new to me technologies. My motto is never stop learning, there are always other ways to get the job done, some may be better, some may be worse, but you will not know until you try.I have been working remotely since 2009. I work in a global community of developers, administrators and technical support staff. I enjoy working this way as I encounter individuals of many cultures.Have you got data that need my skills? How can I be of help?SpecialtiesAmazon Web Services (AWS) RDS / Aurora,Oracle,MySQL, PostgreSQLMSSQL, MongoDB, Linux (Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise, Centos), Perl, PHP, Shell Scripting

Experience

1. Senior Database Administrator

   Veracode

   Mar 2022 — Present

   While at Veracode, I\'ve worked full time 100% remotely in a globally dispersed team to support our database infrastructure and our teams of developers and engineers. We have over 300 instances running on AWS and clusters on MongoDB Atlas and Confluent Cloud. We manage regions not only in the US, but in Europe and in the GovCloud. All together we manage over 150 TB of data, not including the data warehouse.Upgrades: Oracle 12c - 19c on AWS RDS (20+ instances) Postgres multiple versions on AWS RDS + Aurora (100+ instances) MySQL 5.7 to 8.0 on AWS RDS + Aurora (180+ instances) Manage and support: Oracle 19c Postgres MySQL MongoDB ConfluentMigrations: Data from Oracle to Postgres with AWS DMS Python data validation scriptsObservability: Enable observability via DataDog integrations for Oracle, Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB and Kafka Develop monitors and alerts for Database infrastructure including custom queriesIAC: Automation of database creation via Teraform for self service pipelines Automation creation of Confluent Cloud / Kafka clusters, topics, networking and connectors Automation of MongoDB cluster creationPerformance Testing: Develop JMeter scripts to test individual queries against Oracle, PostgreSQL and Mysql Work with performance engineering to monitor application testingReleases: Manage releases and database changes through downtime windows Identify and manage changes that can be applied during non-downtime windowsPerformance Tuning: Identify patterns with Observability tools Performance Insights Cloudwatch Datadog Log parsing with pgbadger or pt-query-digest OEM Work with development teams to optimize queries Identify and perform parameter changes Identify and perform database modifications (iops / storage / instance class or size / etc)Cost Optimization: Work with development teams to terminate and right-size instancesUser Management: Manage users DB level access

Education

• Emory & Henry University

  BA, Economics

  1990 — 1993

• Emory & Henry University

  BS, Business Management

  1990 — 1993

• Virginia Tech - Pamplin College of Business

  MBA, Business and Economics

  1993 — 1995

Skills

• Data Warehousing
• Mysql
• Apache
• Windows Server
• Business Intelligence
• Sql
• Linux
• Mongodb
• Vmware
• E-Commerce
• Xml
• Database Design
• Ubuntu
• Oracle
• Html 5
• Css
• Operating Systems
• Web Development
• Troubleshooting
• Windows
• Database Administration
• Microsoft Sql Server
• Perl
• Scrum
• Html
• Software Documentation
• Os X
• Security
• Mssql
• Php
• Access
• Shell Scripting
• Web Applications
• Databases
• Postgresql