Will I have a dedicated DBA to work on my SQL Server?

Generally yes, however this depends on the size and duration of the projects. For regularly scheduled projects we will have the same person assigned for the duration.  Some larger projects may have multiple DBA’s assigned to them. We understand the benefit of having someone who knows your system, and generally keep the same person on your project. Some exceptions are emergency response, or work that needs to be done while a DBA is on vacation.

Is your team offshore?

Well, sort-of, but not very far off shore. Our team is made up of experienced DBA’s all located in US and Canada.

Do you supply a monitoring system for our SQL servers?

Yes, Database Health Monitor one of the leading monitoring tools for SQL Server is usually installed, with a monitoring component that allows our team to examine what may have been going on with your system at any point in time. If you were to call up and say “We had a performance issues yesterday at 3:30pm, can you help figure out the problem”, without a monitoring tool, it would be very unlikely that anyone could find the root of the issue. With the Database Health Monitor application, once installed we have the data to find those problems even if the problem is no longer occurring.

The monitoring solution reduces the times where we need to ask you to reproduce the performance issue for us to fix it. Instead we can just look at the recorded data and find the problem.

Is a DBA consultant more cost effective than an in-house full time employee DBA?

We can delivers all the benefits of a full-time salaried DBA, without any of the associated employee costs like workspace, equipment, benefits packages, and paid time off. Generally we can get the work done in far less time than a dedicated salaried DBA due to our background, training, and experience.

For instance take a problem like database corruption. Its the kind of thing that a full-time salaried DBA may encounter only once or twice in their career. Due to the varying types of clients, and sheer variety of situations we work with, database corruption is an area that we have specialists that know how to get it right the first time.

How will you connect to my network or SQL Servers?

In order to work on your servers, we do of course need to be able to connect to them. The type of connection may vary depending on what you have in place. Sometimes we use VPN connections, other times Citrix access is provided, sometimes secure RDP, other times we can use use a Zoom or Teams session.

There are environments where specific training is required before we get access to your system. Once case is with medical or patient data, where your specific HIPAA training may have to be completed before we get access to the database, and we are happy to do that.

If you have any other questions that haven’t been addressed here, just reach out with our free 30 minute consult and we can get those questions answered.

Which SQL Server versions do we work with?

We service SQL Server 2005 and newer. Including SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008R2, SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2014 and newer. In some corruption repair cases we even work on SQL 2000 recovery and repair.

Get Started With a Consultation

It all starts with a free 30 minute consultation to discuss your performance needs, and how Stedman Solutions LLC can help. Contact us today!

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