01 · Database administration
Proactive management of your SQL Server estate
By the hourBundleRemote DBA retainer
The unglamorous work that decides whether a bad day becomes a disaster: backups that have been restored, not just taken; patches that are planned, not postponed; indexes and statistics that are maintained; logins that are reviewed. We do it on a schedule and report on it every month, so you always know where the estate stands.
- Backup and restore strategy with RPO and RTO you have actually agreed, tested by restoring
- Patching and cumulative updates, planned in your maintenance windows, with a rollback path
- Index, statistics and integrity maintenance sized to the estate, not the default wizard
- Logins, permissions, orphaned users, auditing and the findings from your last security scan
- SQL Agent jobs, alerts and Database Mail that tell someone when something fails
- Capacity: disk, memory, tempdb, log growth and the licence questions that come with them
- Configuration review: max memory, MAXDOP, cost threshold, instant file initialisation, trace flags
- Monthly health and capacity report in Dutch or English
The first month. We start with a health check and fix things in a fixed order: backups first, then maintenance, then the security findings. You receive a written list of what is left and what it would take.
02 · On-demand support
Help when you need it most
By the hourBundleUrgent call-back
Incidents, performance problems and the questions your team cannot answer alone. A senior DBA joins your call, looks at wait statistics and execution plans instead of guessing, mitigates first and finds the root cause second. Everything ends with a written summary of what happened and what we recommend.
- Incident response: blocking chains, deadlocks, suspect or corrupt databases, failed jobs, full log drives, runaway queries
- Performance tuning: wait statistics, execution plans, indexing strategy, statistics, tempdb, memory and I/O, measured before and after
- High availability and disaster recovery: Always On availability groups, failover cluster instances, log shipping, replication, and the failover and restore tests that prove they work
- Upgrades and migrations: SQL Server 2008 through 2022, to Azure SQL Database, Managed Instance or Azure VMs, with compatibility-level testing and rollback plans
- Capacity and licensing questions before a hardware or Enterprise edition purchase
- A second opinion on vendor advice, application performance claims and architecture proposals
How an incident works. You request an urgent call-back or e-mail with "urgent" in the subject. A senior DBA calls within two business hours, joins your bridge, gets access through your named account and works the problem with your team. The next morning you have a summary with the root cause and the follow-up we recommend.
03 · Custom development
Database work that fits your product
By the hourBundleFixed price on request
Schemas, stored procedures, ETL and integrations, built and reviewed by DBAs who also run production systems. That combination shows: the code we deliver is indexed, set-based, instrumented and documented, because we are usually the ones who get called when it is not.
- Schema design and refactoring, including partitioning and archiving strategies for growing tables
- T-SQL: stored procedures, functions, views, and rewrites of the queries that hurt
- ETL and data pipelines with SSIS, Azure Data Factory and SQL Agent
- API and vendor data integration: pulling data from vendor platforms into your own SQL Server on a schedule
- Reporting models for Power BI and SQL Server Reporting Services
- Code and design review for your developers, with the reasoning written down so it sticks
Remote DBA by the month
A named DBA who knows your estate
16, 32 or 64 hours per monthResponse within 4 business hours
All three services above, delivered by a named senior engineer for a fixed number of hours each month. You get a monthly report, patch planning, change advice and someone who already knows your environment when something happens. Most customers move to a retainer after their first incident with us.
Retainer options and prices →
24x7x365 monitoring
Round-the-clock cover, through DatabaseOnline
When your databases have to be watched at night and at the weekend, we add DatabaseOnline 24x7x365 monitoring to your engagement: automated monitoring of availability, backups, jobs, blocking and capacity, with an on-call DBA who responds to critical alerts. Silver, Gold and Platinum packages, priced per server per month.
Monitoring packages on databaseonline.nl →
