DBaaS solutions lock too many doors: we're locked into a service provider and locked out of configuring it as we need. Fortunately, modern operational patterns are emerging that eliminate the complexity of running even sophisticated applications like databases and free us from the lock-in of *aaS. Now we are free to develop on our laptops and deploy to private data centers, combining the simplicity we thought was only possible with *aaS with the portability of running applications on our own terms. Let's take a look at how to do that with MySQL.