Enterprise Infrastructure
Compute, storage and virtualisation designed for the load you actually have — and a refresh plan so you are not making decisions in an outage.
ExploreData & Database Services
The database everyone depends on and nobody owns
SQL Server administration, performance work and health checks — for the systems that carry your operations and quietly have no DBA.
How it fits together
It got slow gradually, so nobody noticed
Line-of-business databases tend to be installed by the application vendor, configured to defaults, and then left alone for years. Indexes fragment, statistics go stale, transaction logs grow unchecked, and maintenance plans either do not exist or have been failing silently since a server was rebuilt.
The diagram is illustrative. It shows the shape of the capability rather than any specific customer environment.
Overview
In practice
By the time users complain, the assumption is usually that the server needs more memory. Sometimes it does. More often the fix is a maintenance plan, a handful of indexes and a query that was never written to scale.
We provide the database administration capability most mid-sized organisations cannot justify employing full time — as a scheduled service, a one-off health check, or support behind an application vendor.
What changes
Outcomes we are measured on
The point of the work, stated as results rather than product names.
01
Diagnosed performance, not guessed
Wait statistics, query plans and index analysis identifying the actual bottleneck before hardware is bought.
02
Maintenance that runs and is verified
Integrity checks, index and statistics maintenance, log management and backup verification on a monitored schedule.
03
Databases that survive a server failure
High availability and recovery configured to a stated objective, and tested.
04
Reduced licensing waste
Edition and core allocation reviewed against what the workload genuinely requires.
Capabilities
What sits inside this practice
Capability areas we design, implement and support. Scope for any engagement is agreed and documented in writing.
Administration
Day-to-day database operations.
- Microsoft SQL Server
- Database Administration
- Database Maintenance
- Database Monitoring
- Database Troubleshooting
- Patching and Cumulative Updates
- Instance Configuration
Performance and health
Making it faster and keeping it that way.
- Database Performance
- Query Tuning
- Index Optimisation
- SQL Health Checks
- Database Optimisation
- Capacity and Growth Planning
- Resource Governance
Protection and continuity
Not losing it.
- Database Backup
- Database Security
- High Availability
- Always On Availability Groups
- Disaster Recovery
- Restore Testing
- Auditing and Access Control
Data and reporting
Getting value out of it.
- Database Migration
- Version Upgrades
- Data Integration
- Reporting Services
- Business Intelligence
- Power BI
- Data Analytics
- Data Quality Review
How we deliver
A sequence, because order matters here
Each stage produces something you can review before the next one starts.
Health check
A structured review of configuration, maintenance, backup, security and performance, delivered as a written report with prioritised findings.
Stabilise
Fix the maintenance, backup and configuration issues that create the most risk, usually within the first engagement.
Tune
Targeted performance work against the queries and indexes that account for the most measurable load.
Maintain
Scheduled administration, monitoring and periodic re-assessment as data volumes grow.
Questions
The things people ask before signing anything
Often the vendor supports their application and assumes the database is looked after. Backups, patching, performance and security frequently sit in that gap. A health check will show you quickly whether it is covered.
Yes — SQL Server on Azure virtual machines, Azure SQL Database and Managed Instance, including migration assessments from on-premises.
Only under agreed change control, with a documented rollback and, where possible, validation in a test copy first. Health checks themselves are read-only.
A written report covering configuration, backup and recovery position, maintenance status, security, and the top performance findings — each with a recommendation and an effort estimate.
Technologies supporting this capability
Cloud & Productivity
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