Services
Four ways to hire me, sized to the problem: a fixed-scope health check, a tuning sprint, a managed migration, or ongoing fractional DBA support. Every engagement starts small, produces something written, and leaves your systems easier to run than I found them.
Diagnosis before prescription — in practice
Every engagement follows the same shape. First, a short call (no charge) to understand the environment and what's hurting. Second, evidence — for anything beyond a quick fix, I look at your actual servers before proposing anything, usually as a health check or a tuning sprint. Third, a written proposal with scope, deliverables, and timeline — the smallest engagement that solves the problem, not the largest one you'd tolerate. Fourth, the work, finishing with documentation your team can run without me. If ongoing help makes sense after that, the retainer exists; if it doesn't, the documentation is the point.
The four ways in
1 · SQL Server Health Check
What I examine: instance and database configuration, backup and recovery posture (including whether restores actually work), security and permissions, index and statistics health, wait-statistics baseline, HA/DR setup, and Agent jobs, alerting, and Database Mail.
What you get: a written findings report ranked by risk and impact, a prioritized remediation plan your team or I can execute, and a walkthrough call to go through it together.
Signs you need this: you inherited an instance nobody fully understands; things are slow and nobody knows why; an audit or compliance review is coming; there's no DBA on staff and you want to know how exposed you are.
2 · Performance Tuning Sprint
What I do: wait-statistics and Query Store analysis to find where time actually goes, then fix the top offenders — query rewrites, index strategy, execution-plan problems like parameter sniffing, tempdb and memory configuration, blocking and deadlocks.
What you get: measured before-and-after numbers on the agreed pain points, a change log of everything touched and why, and notes on how to keep it from regressing.
Signs you need this: application timeouts; nightly jobs overrunning their window; CPU pinned with no obvious cause; "it got slow after the last release" and nobody can say why.
3 · Migration or Upgrade
What I do: assessment and compatibility check, a migration plan with a tested rollback path, trial migrations against copies, the production cutover in an agreed window, and post-migration validation and tuning. Version upgrades across SQL Server 2000–2025, server-to-server moves, and cloud migrations to Azure SQL, Managed Instance, AWS RDS, or EC2 — including SSIS packages, SSRS reports, jobs, and logins, which is where migrations usually go wrong.
What you get: a written runbook, a rehearsed rollback you'll probably never need, a cutover with downtime measured in the window we agreed, and a post-migration check that proves the new environment is healthy.
Signs you need this: an end-of-life version still in production; hardware or a datacenter contract aging out; a licensing change forcing the question; the last migration attempt got rolled back.
4 · Fractional DBA Retainer
What I do: ongoing monitoring and alert response, patching and maintenance windows, backup verification, performance triage as issues come up, a monthly written health report, and advisory time for whatever the team is planning next.
What you get: a named senior DBA who knows your environment, defined monthly hours and response expectations, and the monthly report — so leadership sees the databases are looked after without hiring for it.
Signs you need this: no full-time DBA and no plans to hire one; an "accidental DBA" doing it alongside a real job; a one-person dependency you need to de-risk; databases that only get attention when something breaks.
The track record behind the models
These aren't hypothetical offerings — they're the shapes that 360+ completed engagements have settled into over 20 years of SQL Server work, from single-instance health checks to multi-year fractional arrangements. The Client Results page lists the engagements by name, and my Upwork profile carries the verified, public reviews behind them. For the cloud, ETL/API, and automation work that often surrounds these engagements, see Cloud & Automation.
Frequently Asked Questions
With a short call — no charge — to understand the environment and the problem. From there I propose the smallest engagement that actually solves it: usually a health check or tuning sprint first, so any larger recommendation is grounded in evidence from your own servers.
All three, depending on the shape of the work. Health checks and tuning sprints are typically fixed-scope, migrations are quoted as projects, and fractional DBA support runs as a monthly retainer. Hourly works for smaller, ad-hoc questions.
Yes. I'm based in St. Cloud, Minnesota and work with clients remotely across the United States. Nearly all SQL Server consulting work — tuning, HA/DR, migrations, and ongoing DBA support — is done securely over remote access, the same way I've delivered 360+ engagements.
That's the normal case, and it works well. I slot in as the database specialist alongside your IT team or MSP — they keep the infrastructure, I handle what's inside SQL Server. Existing monitoring is a head start, not a conflict: I'll use it, tune its alerts, and fill the gaps.
Not sure which model fits?
That's what the first call is for. Tell me what's hurting and I'll tell you the smallest engagement that fixes it — even if the answer is "you don't need me for this."