Once you comprehend the basics of Riak, it's a simple thing to manage. If this seems like a lot to swallow, take it from a long-time relational database guy (me), Riak is a comparatively simple construct, especially when you factor in the complexity of distributed systems in general. Riak manages much of the daily tasks an operator might do themselves manually, such as sharding by keys, adding/removing nodes, rebalancing data, supporting multiple backends, and allowing growth with unbalanced nodes. And due to Riak's architecture, the best part of all is when a server goes down at night, you can sleep (do you remember what that was?), and fix it in the morning.