Microsoft SQL Server DBA

Xtivia offers a range of virtual DBA services for Microsoft SQL Server

We can help you provide high availability and disaster recovery for your Microsoft SQL Server database platform. We have extensive experience with both SQL Server Standard Edition and SQL Server Enterprise Edition. We can work with any supported versions of the operating system that are appropriate in traditional or virtual machine environments for the version including:

Microsoft SQL Server License Help

View a detailed menu of SQL Server Services.

Ensure high availability and disaster recovery with SQL Server active and passive clustering

SQL Server Cluster Services protect against disruptive hardware failures. With a cluster, if there is a failure, the system automatically fails over to a secondary server. The servers share disk resources so we recommend a SAN or RAID array with a high level of hardware redundancy. We can help you choose the right type of cluster as well as recommend storage solutions. We’ll work with you from the design phase through installation and provide ongoing support to maintain performance and uptime.

Other services to protect your database and ensure uptime

• SQL Server Database Mirroring Database mirroring is available on SQL 2005 and SQL 2008. Some types of database mirroring are available only on SQL Server Enterprise edition. We can help you choose and implement the right type of mirroring based on your business needs, version and hardware capabilities.
• SQL Server Replication SQL Server Replication is a good option for setting up a reporting database, a test database or a high availability fail-over database. Replication works well in situations where there is a good connection between servers and works well moving data from different versions of SQL Server. We can help you gather requirements, implement and manage your replication solution.
• Log Shipping Log shipping is a viable option for high availability and disaster recovery when a moderate amount of time to recovery is acceptable, a small amount of data loss is not critical and the locations and versions of SQL Server make database mirroring or clustering impractical. We can assist you with all aspects of log shipping.

SQL Server performance tuning and Health Checks

Health Check for Microsoft SQL Server

Virtual-DBA Overview

SQL Server Tables

SQL Server performance can degrade for many reasons including increased data sizes, new applications, hardware failures and a host of other issues. Let us diagnose and fix your performance problems.

Keep your SQL Server at peak performance levels by having Xtivia perform a Health Check. Let our experienced DBA’s perform an in-depth analysis of your system including configuration, performance, availability and security. Once our analysis is complete you’ll receive an easy-to-understand report that includes an overview of your system and offers suggestions for improvements.

SQL Server hardware and configuration problems

We can find and eliminate your SQL Server performance bottlenecks. Slow performance can result from incorrect memory configuration or database configuration. Our analysis can determine if:

• you have enough memory.
• your CPU is fast enough.
• you have as many CPUs as you need.

We can find out why your disk so busy and suggest solutions and also offer solutions to slow system performance.

We can fix SQL Server Query problems?

We can help you design and optimize queries and stored procedures to improve query performance. We’ll also address:

• reduced query speed
• increased blocking
• error causes
• rebuilding indexes
• updating statistics

Eliminating confusion about patches and service packs

Applying patches and service packs can be confusing. Let us help you determine which patches and service packs you need and install them with minimal disruption. Once a service pack is installed, we can help maximize new features.

Take advantage of our experience for your upgrades and migrations

Any upgrade − including upgrading your SQL Server instance from 2000 to 2005 or 2008 − requires planning and experience. Let us help you set up a test environment to test your application against the new version. We can also help you decide if this is the right time to move from a 32-bit version of SQL Server to a more scalable 64-bit version. We’ll show you the advantages of 64-bit system including its ability to handle a growing database.

Perhaps you are ready to move from MS Access or another database to SQL Server. We can help you with that, too. We’ve moved many databases from other platforms and databases to SQL Server.

Our security audit provides peace of mind

The safety and security of your data is vital. Our tailor-made security audit will reveal system vulnerabilities and offer patches and procedures to improve your security.

Review your backup and recovery plan

We can help you design a backup and recovery strategy to protect your data and provide recovery with minimum downtime. We’ll make sure your backup and recovery plan matches your business needs. We’ll also make sure you are backing up frequently enough to prevent large data loss.

Use us as a resource for SQL server development

We’ve worked with many development teams as developers, DBAs and architects. We can help with SQL writing and tuning, reviews of data models, performance and general best practices.

We can also help with the following issues:

• Creating a test environment with sensitive data removed. We can help to design a process to safely alter sensitive data.
• Rolling out changes from development and staging to your production database. We can help by designing procedures or by suggesting state-of-the-art tools and training you to use them.
• Debugging DTS or SSIS packages. We can help with troubleshooting and implementation.