The state of the art _is_ hiring a DBA. They get paid to be up on all the database monitoring, scaling, managing and management tools. This is why DB consultants charge $200+ an hour. It's pretty arcane knowledge, and for a business of any size, the database quickly becomes the lifeblood of the organization.

This is also the reason that databases like Couch DB or Amazon Simple DB or Google's App Engine are so appealing. They all have the promise of reducing db management headaches, at the cost of sacrificing features.