Greenfield & redesign
Design & architecture
New database infrastructure and application data architecture designed for the workload you actually have — sized, documented and built to grow without a re-platform in two years.
Project & advisory services
Database consultancy
Need an experienced database consultant for your next project? Onsys designs, migrates and modernises database environments — optimising licence usage, exploiting virtualisation and cutting total cost of ownership along the way.
Where a consultant earns their fee
Six things we get called in for
No matter how large or small your database estate, our consultants work as an extension of your team — scoping the work, delivering it, and handing back something your people can run.
Azure · AWS · OCI
Migrations & platform moves
Database, platform and data migrations to Azure, AWS or Oracle Cloud — assessed, rehearsed and cut over with a rollback plan, so the go-live weekend is boring.
Migration paths ›Tested, not assumed
High availability & DR
AlwaysOn availability groups, SQL Server failover clusters, Oracle RAC and DR solutions — designed against a real RPO and RTO, then failover-tested rather than assumed.
HA & DR solutions ›Off unsupported versions
Upgrades & patching
Version upgrades and patch campaigns off unsupported releases, with compatibility analysis first and a tested rollback path before anything touches production.
Upgrade paths ›ETL · SSRS · BI
Data, BI & integration
ETL and integration pipelines, SSRS reporting and business intelligence models that turn the data you already hold into something the business will actually open.
Reduce TCO
Licensing & cost optimisation
License usage review and virtualisation strategy to cut total cost of ownership — often the fastest payback of anything on this page, and frequently self-funding.
Scope
Everything you can book a consultant for
Engagements run from a half-day health check to a multi-month migration programme. If what you need is not on this list, it is still worth asking.
- Discuss and plan a new database project
- Perform a database health check
- Database upgrade or patching
- Implement a high-availability solution or build a database cluster
- Backup, recovery and disaster recovery design
- Performance tuning and optimisation
- Troubleshoot and fix a specific database problem
- ETL, integration and data migration work
- Database development and SSRS reporting solutions
- Database monitoring design and implementation
- License optimisation and virtualisation review
- On-site DBA support where remote will not do
How it runs
From first call to handover
Every engagement follows the same shape, whether it is two days or two months.
Scoping call
A senior consultant — not a salesperson — works out what you are trying to achieve, what constraints you are under, and whether the job is worth doing at all.
Assessment & options
We assess the current environment and come back with options, costs and risks, so you can choose on evidence rather than on a vendor recommendation.
Delivery
Work runs to the agreed scope with defined deliverables. Fixed-price projects pay on milestones; advisory work is billed against actual hours.
Handover & documentation
You get the environment, the runbooks and the reasoning behind the decisions — so your team can operate it without calling us back for every change.
Specialisms
Where our consultants have depth
Our database specialists have many years of industry experience improving performance in EDB, SQL Server and Oracle environments across a range of industries.
Core database platforms
- Microsoft SQL Server
- Oracle Database
- EDB Postgres
- PostgreSQL
- MySQL & MariaDB
- MongoDB
High availability & clustering
- AlwaysOn availability groups
- SQL Server failover clustering
- Oracle RAC & Data Guard
- MySQL Group Replication
- PostgreSQL streaming replication
Data, BI & cloud
- SSIS · SSRS · SSAS
- ETL & integration
- Microsoft Azure
- AWS
- Oracle Cloud (OCI)
Commercials
Three ways to engage a consultant
Pick the model that matches the certainty of your scope. Most clients use more than one over time.
$150/hr
Hourly advisory
Scope is open or exploratory. $150 per hour with a four-hour minimum, billed against actual time. Ideal for health checks, second opinions and troubleshooting.
See consultancy rates ›Milestone-based
Fixed-price project
Scope is defined. One agreed price with milestone-based payments and guaranteed timelines, so a migration or HA build carries no budget risk.
How projects are priced ›From $1,500/mo
Ongoing cover
The project is done and someone has to run it. Monthly DBA plans from $1,500, or on-call standby from $100 per instance per month.
Compare support options ›Planning a new database project?
Book a meeting with an experienced database consultant to plan it properly. The first conversation is free, and we will tell you if the work is not worth doing.
Schedule a CallPublished Last reviewed
FAQ
Common questions
Advisory and consultancy work is $150 per hour with a four-hour minimum engagement, GST exclusive. Defined-scope work such as a migration, upgrade or HA build is quoted as a fixed price with milestone-based payments, so the budget is fixed before the work starts.
Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, PostgreSQL, EDB Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB and MongoDB. Our specialists have particular depth improving performance in EDB, SQL Server and Oracle environments, on-premises and across Azure, AWS and Oracle Cloud.
New database infrastructure and architecture, database and platform migrations, cloud migrations to Azure, AWS or OCI, high availability and DR builds, upgrades and patching, ETL and integration work, SSRS and BI reporting, performance tuning and licence optimisation.
Frequently. A licence usage review combined with a virtualisation and consolidation strategy often reduces licence counts enough to pay for the engagement outright. Reducing total cost of ownership is treated as a deliverable of the work, not a side effect.
Yes. Where the scope can be defined, we quote a single fixed price with milestone-based payments and agreed timelines, covering design through to production cutover. This removes cost-overrun risk from migrations, upgrades and cluster builds.
Most work is delivered remotely, which is faster to start and cheaper for you. On-site DBA support is available where the work genuinely requires someone in the room — data centre migrations, hardware-dependent tasks or restricted environments.
Consultancy is project and advisory work with a defined start and end — design it, migrate it, tune it, hand it over. DBA support plans are ongoing operational cover: 24/7 monitoring, incident response and a guaranteed response SLA from $1,500 per month.
Book a scoping call with a senior consultant. The first conversation is free and covers what you are trying to achieve, your constraints and whether the work is worth doing. You then get options, costs and risks in writing before committing to anything.