While it is obvious that a highly available database requires some degree of self-management, it is not clear to what extend and how the responsibilities should be divided among the DBMS, the surrounding HA framework or even applications. We start with analyzing expectations of an HA database in a telecom setup. We check how the expectations are met in a commercial implementation of a telecom platform. We analyze the way of allocating various HA responsibilities to different parts of the system. We end up with a reference division of selfmanaging responsibilities in an HA DBMS and the surrounding HA framework.