Abdelmawla Gharieb

Tools & Technologies:

• Databases: MySQL, Percona, MongoDB, PlanetScale, ProxySQL, MaxScale, CloudSQL.
• Automation & Scripting: Puppet, Terraform, Bash, RunDeck
• Monitoring & Infrastructure: GCP, GitHub, Vault, Linux, Grafana, DataDog.
• Performance & Backup Tools: Sysbench, Xtrabackup, Percona Toolkit.

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Automated MySQL Upgrades: Developed an automated MySQL upgrade process using Bash scripts and RunDeck, ensuring a seamless and efficient transition from MySQL 5.7 to 8.0.
• Database Modernization: Led the DBA team in integrating and supporting MongoDB Atlas and PlanetScale, expanding the company’s database technology stack.
• Leadership & Strategy: Defined DBA team objectives, set priorities, and aligned projects with business needs and management goals to enhance operational efficiency.

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Database Migration Automation: Designed and implemented an automated database migration process for monthly application releases, reducing DBA effort from two weeks to just four hours. This also shifted staging environment migration responsibilities to the release management team, allowing DBAs to focus on higher-impact projects.
• Infrastructure Optimization: Led a database infrastructure revision and successfully migrated data disks from regional to zonal SSDs, resulting in an annual cost savings of approximately $850K.
• Database & OS Upgrades: Managed the MySQL 8.0 and OS upgrade rollout across the entire database fleet, ensuring a smooth transition with minimal downtime.
• Scalability & Automation: Spearheaded initiatives to automate the provisioning and expansion of new database regions, streamlining infrastructure growth.
• Leadership & Project Management: Served as Scrum Master, overseeing project planning, sprint execution, and task assignments for the DBA team, ensuring efficient workflow and project delivery.

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Performance Benchmarking Automation: Designed and implemented a performance benchmarking framework, delivering key benefits such as:

a) Automating benchmarking tasks to improve efficiency.

b) Reducing DBA effort required for generating performance reports.

c) Supporting infrastructure and software change operations with data-driven insights.

• Database Infrastructure Optimization: Led the upgrade of machine types for approximately 250 GCP database nodes, improving performance and scalability.
• High Availability & Disaster Recovery: Configured and maintained active/standby database replication environments to ensure system reliability and failover readiness.
• Database Technology Evaluation: Assessed and compared various database solutions—including MySQL NDB Cluster, InnoDB Cluster, TiDB, and Vitess—to determine the best-fit data store for business needs.

Tools & Technologies:

• Databases: MySQL, MariaDB, Aurora, GDB
• Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS, RDS, EC2, S3
• Automation & Performance: Bash, Sysbench, Linux

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Database Escalation Support: Provided the highest level of escalation support for Amazon RDS (MySQL, MariaDB, Aurora MySQL) customers, troubleshooting complex database issues and ensuring optimal performance.
• Product & Feature Evaluation: Conducted benchmarking, testing, and validation of new RDS products, features, and database versions before release to production, ensuring stability and reliability.
• Root Cause Analysis & Resolution: Performed deep-dive investigations using GDB and Sysbench to identify and resolve database performance issues, delivering both short-term fixes and long-term preventive solutions.
• Database Engineering & Innovation: Provided database engineering expertise to support the design and rollout of new Amazon RDS products and features.
• Continuous System Improvement: Regularly assessed RDS infrastructure to identify opportunities for enhancements and optimizations, improving scalability, efficiency, and customer experience.

Tools & Technologies:

• Databases: MySQL, MySQL NDB Cluster, MHA, ProxySQL, Xtrabackup
• Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS, GCP, Load Balancer
• Automation & Performance: Bash, Sysbench, Linux

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• High Availability & Reliability: Maintained redundant MySQL databases across multiple sites, ensuring high availability and seamless maintenance operations.
• Database Scalability & Performance: Managed rapidly growing database volumes (~5TB of data), optimizing large tables with billions of rows and supporting capacity planning efforts.
• NDB Cluster Implementation: Designed and maintained one of the largest MySQL NDB Cluster deployments, consisting of 24 data nodes, 50+ SQL nodes, and 2 management nodes, managing 15TB of data for high-performance distributed workloads.
• Database Upgrades & Optimization: Oversaw MySQL version upgrades across all database servers, improving performance, security, reliability, and compatibility.
• Cloud Infrastructure Management: Provisioned and managed AWS & GCP instances for proof-of-concept (POC) testing and evaluation of new technologies.

Tools & Technologies:

• Databases: MySQL, TokuDB, Spider SE, MHA, Xtrabackup
• Infrastructure & Automation: Load Balancer, Bash, Sysbench, Linux

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Database Management at Scale: Oversaw the administration of 200+ MySQL instances across production, staging, QA, development, and lab environments, managing up to 1TB of active data.
• High Availability & Failover: Implemented MHA (Master High Availability) on 50+ servers, enabling faster master-role switching (slave promotion) during planned maintenance, significantly reducing downtime and increasing system flexibility.
• Backup & Disaster Recovery Optimization: Enhanced backup and recovery processes by integrating XtraBackup with binlog stream backup, enabling more efficient point-in-time recovery (PiTR).
• Database Upgrades & Optimization: Led the MySQL 5.7 upgrade project, testing and rolling out new features such as multi-source replication and multi-threaded slaves to improve performance and reliability.
• Storage Optimization: Successfully implemented TokuDB storage engine to reduce large database sizes while maintaining high performance.

Tools & Technologies:

• Databases: MySQL, MariaDB, Percona, Galera Cluster
• Infrastructure & Automation: Load Balancer, Bash, Sysbench, VM, Linux, Windows

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Database Support & Troubleshooting: Provided expert support for Galera Cluster and MySQL, diagnosing and resolving complex database issues.
• Backup & Disaster Recovery: Supported a variety of database backup and recovery solutions, including Point-in-Time Recovery (PiTR) to ensure data integrity and business continuity.
• High Availability & Failover: Designed and administered high availability solutions with automated failover mechanisms, ensuring system resilience and minimal downtime.
• Performance Optimization: Conducted system analysis, troubleshooting, and performance tuning to enhance database efficiency and stability.
• Technical Writing & Knowledge Sharing: Authored and maintained technical blogs, best practices, and methodology guides to document and share database expertise.
• Pre-Sales & Proof of Concept Development: Collaborated with FromDual Services and sales teams on pre-sales engagements, developing mock-ups and proof-of-concept solutions for potential clients.

Tools & Technologies:

• Databases & Programming: MySQL, Java, PL/SQL
• Web & API Technologies: AJAX, XML, RMI, REST
• Operating Systems: Linux

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• 24/7 Database Administration & Support: Provided round-the-clock MySQL database administration and support, ensuring optimal performance and reliability for all company teams.
• Database Performance Optimization: Tuned and optimized large databases with 150+ million records, enhancing query efficiency and system responsiveness.
• Backup & Recovery Automation: Developed a Java-based backup and recovery automation tool, streamlining disaster recovery processes.
• Disaster Recovery & High Availability: Designed and implemented storage strategies and a disaster recovery plan, ensuring data integrity, recovery performance, and high availability for all company systems.
• Performance Enhancement: Improved the "Best Offers Recommendation" system, reducing processing time from 4.5 hours to just 5 minutes by leveraging MySQL stored procedures and optimization techniques.