SQL Server DBA services

Onsys plans start at $1,500 per month excluding GST for up to 10 SQL Server instances — $150 per instance. Plan B is $3,000 and Plan C is $7,500, covering larger estates and shorter response times. Ad-hoc consultancy is $150 per hour with a four-hour minimum, and emergency work without an agreement is $180 per hour.

For most estates, yes. A single in-house DBA cannot cover 24 hours a day, takes leave, and knows one set of platforms. A monthly plan costs a fraction of a salary, includes service hours, and gives you a team with cover at 2am and on public holidays. Where it does not stack up is a very large estate needing someone on site daily — we will say so.

One hour on 24/7 DBA Plans B and C, and two hours on Plan A, around the clock including weekends and public holidays. The clock starts when the alert fires, not when someone notices it. Without a support agreement there is no contracted response time.

SQL Server 2008 and R2 through to 2022, on-premises and in the cloud — including versions past their support end date, which we can keep running safely while an upgrade is planned. We also cover Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, SQL Server on Azure VMs and Amazon RDS for SQL Server.

Yes, over secure remote access established at the start of the engagement, using named accounts rather than shared credentials. We work alongside your team rather than around them, and every change is documented so the knowledge stays in your business.

Yes — design, build, and the part most estates skip, which is testing a failover on purpose before you need one in anger. We also handle failover cluster instances, log shipping, replication and Transparent Data Encryption across availability groups.

No. All monthly plans run on a rolling basis with no lock-in. Consultancy is hourly with a four-hour minimum, and fixed-price projects carry no ongoing commitment once the work is complete.