24×7
GLOBAL DBA OPERATIONS COVERAGE
99.999%
AVAILABILITY ENGINEERED
15-Min
CRITICAL INCIDENT SLA
15+
YEARS OF DATABASE MASTERY
THE MINERVADB DIFFERENCE
One SQL Server Engineering Partner for the Entire Database Lifecycle
Microsoft SQL Server remains the backbone of enterprise data infrastructure worldwide — powering financial transactions, ERP systems, e-commerce platforms, and analytics workloads that organizations depend on every second of every day. Yet most enterprises operate their database environments far below their potential, battling preventable performance degradation, fragile Always On topologies, poorly planned index strategies, and capacity crises that materialize without warning.
MinervaDB’s SQL Server Support practice exists to close that gap. We bring principal-level SQL Server expertise to every engagement — not junior consultants learning on your production systems, but engineers who have operated SQL Server at enterprise scale, engineered Always On Availability Groups through real disaster scenarios, and tuned query execution plans against billion-row tables under live traffic. Our methodology spans the entire SQL Server lifecycle: architecture design, performance engineering, high availability, security hardening, observability, and 24×7 operations — all under a single, accountable partnership.
Whether you run on-premises, in Azure SQL Database, or across hybrid cloud environments — MinervaDB delivers the specialized SQL Server support that makes your database infrastructure a competitive advantage rather than an operational liability.
CORE CAPABILITIES
The Six Pillars of SQL Server Engineering Excellence
01 / PERFORMANCE TUNING
Query Optimization & SQL Server Performance Engineering
Most performance problems are not mysteries — they are the predictable result of missing indexes, parameter sniffing, unbounded execution plans, misconfigured memory, and queries that were never analyzed after they shipped. Our Our performance engineers surface and fix these issues before your users encounter them.
✦ Execution plan analysis and query store optimization
✦ Index strategy design, fragmentation management, and statistics tuning
✦ TempDB, buffer pool, and memory grant optimization
✦ Parameter sniffing resolution and plan guide implementation
✦ Wait statistics analysis and I/O subsystem tuning
✦ Workload benchmarking, load testing, and capacity modeling
02 / HIGH AVAILABILITY
Always On Availability Groups, FCI & Failover Architecture
High availability is not a feature you configure once — it is an engineering discipline you prove through repeated failure testing. We build database topologies that survive real-world failures: primary node crashes, network partitions, storage corruption, and cloud availability zone outages — and we test them until we are certain they hold.
✦ Always On AG design, deployment, and management
✦ Failover Cluster Instances (FCI) and WSFC configuration
✦ Readable secondary replicas and read-scale load balancing
✦ Cross-datacenter and multi-region availability topologies
✦ Log shipping and mirroring (legacy) to AG migration
✦ RPO/RTO engineering, DR runbook creation, and failover drills
03 / REMOTE DBA SERVICES
24×7 Remote DBA Services Support
Databases do not keep business hours. Our globally distributed our DBA team provides genuine 24×7 follow-the-sun operations coverage — not on-call engineers woken from sleep, but active DBAs operating in their business hours across every time zone. From proactive monitoring to critical incident response, we keep your environment running at its best around the clock.
✦ 24×7 proactive monitoring and adaptive alerting
✦ Critical incident SLA: 15-minute guaranteed response
✦ Daily health checks and maintenance automation
✦ Patch management, cumulative updates, and vulnerability remediation
✦ Capacity planning and growth forecasting
✦ Monthly executive reporting and performance dashboards
04 / MIGRATION & MODERNIZATION
Database Migrations & Version Upgrades, Done Without Drama
Database migrations are where platforms most often come to grief. MinervaDB treats every migration — whether a version upgrade, on-premises to cloud, or a cross-platform modernization — as an engineering problem to be measured, rehearsed, and de-risked, not a leap of faith taken over a weekend.
✦ In-place and logical upgrades from 2014 through 2022
✦ Zero-downtime migration using AG cutover strategy
✦ On-premises to Azure SQL Database and Managed Instance
✦ Oracle, MySQL, and PostgreSQL to MSSQL migration
✦ Pre-migration compatibility assessment and query validation
✦ Tested rollback paths and post-migration performance validation
05 / SECURITY & COMPLIANCE
Database Security Hardening, Encryption & Regulatory Compliance
A high-performance SQL Server that is insecure or non-compliant is not an asset — it is a liability. We implement defense-in-depth security across every SQL Server deployment: from transport encryption and role-based access control to enterprise audit logging and compliance reporting that satisfies regulators and auditors across HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOX, GDPR, and ISO 27001 frameworks.
✦ Role-based access control (RBAC) and least-privilege enforcement
✦ Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) and Always Encrypted
✦ SQL Audit, Extended Events, and compliance reporting
✦ Advanced Threat Protection and vulnerability scanning
✦ Row-Level Security and Dynamic Data Masking
✦ SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, GDPR, and SOX compliance engineering
06 / BACKUP & DISASTER RECOVERY
Database Backup Automation & Disaster Recovery Engineering
An unverified backup is merely a hope. We design and operate end-to-end backup and recovery strategies — with validated restore procedures, point-in-time recovery capabilities, and automated integrity verification. Every backup strategy is tested against your documented RTO and RPO. We run disaster recovery drills on schedule so that when a genuine failure arrives, your team executes a rehearsed procedure rather than improvising under pressure.
✦ Full, differential, and T-log backup automation
✦ Point-in-time recovery (PITR) implementation and testing
✦ Cross-region backup replication and geo-redundant storage
✦ Backup validation, integrity checks, and scheduled restore drills
✦ RPO/RTO-driven recovery architecture and business continuity planning
✦ Azure Backup and cloud-native backup integration
FULL PLATFORM COVERAGE
Deep Expertise Across Every SQL Server Edition & Deployment Model
On-Premises Microsoft SQL Server
Full-lifecycle support from SQL Server 2012 through 2022 deployed on bare metal, VMware, and Hyper-V infrastructure. We manage end-of-support migrations and engineer enterprise-grade HA topologies for your on-premises estate.
→ MSSQL 2019 / 2022 performance optimization
→ Always On AG and FCI deployment and management
→ End-of-support 2012/2014 migration planning
→ Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) engineering
Azure SQL Database & SQL Managed Instance
Managed Azure environments deliver cloud agility, but still require expert tuning, cost governance, and architectural discipline. We architect, migrate, tune, and operate Azure SQL deployments that capture cloud-native benefits while maintaining full performance control and cost predictability. Learn more at the Microsoft Azure SQL documentation.
→ Elastic pool design and Azure SQL Database management
→ Managed Instance migration and optimization
→ Geo-replication, Business Critical tier configuration
→ Azure Synapse Analytics integration and pipeline optimization
SQL Server on AWS & Google Cloud
Organizations running MSSQL on Amazon RDS for SQL Server, AWS EC2, or Google Cloud Compute Engine benefit from the same MinervaDB expertise applied to cloud-specific constraints — instance sizing, parameter group tuning, multi-AZ HA configuration, and cross-region disaster recovery.
→ Amazon RDS optimization and HA design
→ MSSQL on EC2 performance engineering
→ Cross-cloud SQL Server migration and repatriation
→ Reserved instance cost optimization and right-sizing
Hybrid & Multi-Cloud SQL Server
Complex enterprises often run Microsoft databases across on-premises hardware, Azure, and other cloud providers simultaneously. We architect and operate hybrid environments with consistent security posture, unified monitoring, and carefully engineered replication topologies that keep data synchronized and available across every location.
→ Azure Arc-enabled database management
→ Hybrid AG with on-premises primary and cloud replica
→ Unified observability across on-prem and cloud environments
→ Cloud repatriation strategy and cost optimization
05 / OBSERVABILITY
You Cannot Operate What You Cannot See
Every database environment we operate is instrumented to a standard that turns the database from a black box into a glass one. Reliability and performance are measurements, not opinions. We capture the metrics that actually predict trouble — Always On replica synchronization state, blocking and deadlock chains, memory pressure indicators, TempDB contention, and disk I/O saturation — and surface them through dashboards your team can read at a glance.
Alerts fire on leading indicators, tuned to eliminate the false positives that train operations teams to ignore their pagers. Query Store telemetry ensures that the slowest, most expensive SQL statements are always visible and attributable — so regressions are caught in minutes, not discovered during incidents.
✦ Query Store analysis and regression and regression detection
✦ Extended Events, DMVs, and performance monitoring
✦ AG health and replication lag alerting
✦ Custom Grafana and SSRS dashboards for SQL Server KPIs
✦ Blocking, deadlocks, and wait-stats trending
✦ SLO instrumentation and executive transparent reporting
INDUSTRY SOLUTIONS
SQL Server Support for Data-Intensive Industries
Wherever SQL Server data integrity, latency, and scale are existential business concerns, MinervaDB delivers. Our SQL Server engineers have operated mission-critical database platforms in the most demanding production environments in the world.
Financial Services & FinTech
ACID-compliant transaction processing, ultra-low-latency configurations for high-frequency workloads, real-time fraud analytics, and the auditability that SOX, PCI-DSS, and GDPR regulators demand.
Healthcare & Life Sciences
HIPAA-aligned platforms protecting patient data while enabling clinical analytics — with the audit trails, TDE encryption standards, and access controls that healthcare compliance mandates.
SaaS & Technology
Multi-tenant architectures, elastic scaling strategies, connection pool management for stability, and the performance discipline that keeps high-growth software products reliable under unpredictable load.
E-Commerce & Retail
Query optimization for catalog, cart, and order management systems that survive Black Friday peak traffic — backed by real-time inventory analytics and session management tuned for the highest concurrency.
Manufacturing & ERP
Performance optimization for SAP, Dynamics 365, and custom ERP workloads — ensuring the database tier supporting your core manufacturing and supply-chain processes is engineered for deterministic performance and zero unplanned downtime.
Government & Public Sector
FedRAMP-aligned Government database deployments, FISMA compliance engineering, and the rigorous security hardening required for government-grade data infrastructure — with transparent audit trails and change management documentation.
ENGAGEMENT MODEL
How We Work with SQL Server Clients
| ENGAGEMENT TYPE | BEST FOR | WHAT YOU GET |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture & Design | New platforms, migrations, scaling events, and technology selection | Reference architecture, capacity model, HA topology design, DR strategy, migration roadmap |
| Performance Audit | Slow queries, rising cloud costs, recurring incidents, pre-launch optimization | Prioritized findings report, execution plan remediation, index recommendations, tuned configuration |
| Managed Database Operations | Lean internal teams needing 24×7 coverage, enterprises augmenting DBA capacity | SLO-backed monitoring, 15-min incident response, continuous optimization, transparent reporting |
| Embedded Engineering | Sustained SQL Server build-out, modernization programs, team augmentation | Senior SQL Server engineers integrated with your team and roadmap, full knowledge transfer |
DATA RELIABILITY ENGINEERING
SRE Principles Applied to SQL Server Infrastructure
MinervaDB brings Site Reliability Engineering discipline to the SQL Server tier: explicit SLOs, error budgets, chaos engineering, automated failover, proving your RPO and RTO rather than assuming them.
SLO
Service Level Objectives
Explicit, measurable reliability targets for every SQL Server service — query latency percentiles, AG synchronization lag, availability SLOs — tracked continuously and reported transparently.
DR
Disaster Recovery Engineering
RPO and RTO defined in business terms, SQL Server backup and backup and replication processes engineered to meet them, and disaster recovery drills executed on schedule — simulating real failures, not theoretical ones.
CE
Chaos Engineering for SQL Server
Controlled failure injection — primary node failovers, replica promotion scenarios, network partition simulations — executed in staging to prove that your HA topology performs as designed, not as assumed.
WHY MINERVADB
Why Enterprises Choose MinervaDB for SQL Server Support
We are not the largest SQL Server consultancy, and we never intend to be. We are the firm you call when your database infrastructure absolutely cannot fail — and when generic advice from a generalist consultancy is not good enough.
Principal-Level SQL Server Engineers Only
Your database platform is designed and operated by principal-level engineers with 15+ years of production-scale Microsoft SQL Server experience — not junior consultants building skills on your infrastructure. Microsoft-certified SQL Server professionals supporting Fortune 500 enterprises globally.
Vendor-Neutral & Independently Accountable
We sell no SQL Server licenses and earn no Microsoft vendor referral fees. Our only incentive is to recommend the SQL Server edition, deployment model, and cloud platform that genuinely serves your workload — even when that means doing less, not more.
True 24×7 Follow-the-Sun SQL Server Coverage
Genuine 24×7 SQL Server operations across every time zone — not on-call engineers woken from sleep, but active SQL Server DBAs operating in their business hours. 15-minute critical incident response SLA, every hour of every day.
Full-Stack SQL Server Accountability
One partner owns the architecture, engineering, operations, and observability. No vendor finger-pointing when something breaks at 3 a.m. The engineers who design your systems carry operational responsibility for them.
Explicit SLAs & Full Transparency
We operate against documented Service Level Agreements and maintain a transparent ticketing system with detailed work reports for every action taken on your database infrastructure. Reliability stops being a hope and becomes a number you can trust.
Knowledge Transfer by Default
We document everything and train your database team as we go. Every runbook, configuration change, architecture decision, and incident post-mortem is handed back to your organization. Our goal is to make your team stronger, not to make you dependent on us.
ONBOARDING
Getting Started with MinervaDB SQL Server Support
1
Discover
Environment analysis, performance baseline assessment, security audit, HA topology review, and scalability requirements evaluation. No recommendation without evidence.
2
Design
Target architecture, SLA definition, monitoring setup, escalation procedures, runbook creation, and a documented plan with measurable outcomes for each engagement phase.
3
Deliver
We execute — tuning, building, migrating, automating — with rigorous testing and zero-surprise change management. Remote monitoring infrastructure and dashboards are deployed and validated.
4
Operate & Improve
24×7 DBA support activation, team integration, knowledge handover, and continuous optimization with transparent reporting and a compounding-value mindset.
PERFORMANCE ENGINEERING
Performance Engineering Is in Our DNA
MinervaDB was founded by database performance engineers, and that heritage shows in everything we deliver for the Microsoft data platform. We treat latency, throughput, and efficiency as first-class engineering outcomes — measured, instrumented, and continuously improved across every engagement.
Most performance degradation on enterprise databases is not mysterious — it is the predictable result of decisions made without measurement. A missing index, an overloaded TempDB, parameter sniffing on a hot query, an autogrowth event hitting disk at peak load, a connection pool sitting at its limit — each is invisible until it isn’t, and by then it is usually a production incident. Our performance practice exists to surface these issues before they reach your end users.
We begin with rigorous instrumentation: capturing query-level telemetry from the Query Store, wait-event analysis via Dynamic Management Views, lock contention tracking through Extended Events, and resource saturation signals from the operating system and storage tiers. We benchmark against representative workloads, model capacity headroom, and establish the baselines that make regressions obvious and attributable — so that the next deployment does not produce a surprise at midnight.
✦ Execution plan analysis and query optimization
✦ Index strategy design and maintenance automation
✦ TempDB and memory grant optimization
✦ Connection pooling and concurrency management
✦ Benchmarking, load testing, and capacity modeling
✦ Continuous performance regression detection
CAPACITY & SCALE
Capacity Planning and Scaling Ahead of Demand
Growth should be a cause for celebration, not a source of outages. We model capacity rigorously so your database platform scales before your traffic does — not in a panic after it already has.
The most expensive problems are the ones that arrive with success. A product takes off, a marketing campaign over-delivers, a new enterprise customer onboards ten times the expected volume — and platforms that were comfortable yesterday become saturated today. By the time the symptoms are obvious, the options are all bad: emergency vertical scaling under load, hurried schema changes against a struggling primary, or simply riding out the degradation and hoping customers forgive it.
MinervaDB replaces that scramble with foresight. We build capacity models grounded in your real workload — not vendor rules of thumb — that project when you will exhaust CPU, memory, storage, IOPS, and connection headroom under realistic growth scenarios. We identify the scaling axis that matters most for your specific deployment, whether that is read replicas, vertical resizing, horizontal partitioning, or a fundamental architectural change, and we sequence those moves so each one buys enough runway to plan the next calmly.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Which SQL Server versions and editions does MinervaDB support?
MinervaDB supports the complete SQL Server ecosystem: MSSQL 2012 through 2022 in Standard, Enterprise, and Developer editions; Azure SQL Database (including Hyperscale and Business Critical tiers); Azure SQL Managed Instance; SQL Server on Amazon RDS; and MSSQL on Google Cloud Compute Engine. We also support MSSQL on Linux. Learn more at the Microsoft SQL Server documentation.
Do you replace our internal SQL Server DBA team or work alongside them?
Our engagement model adapts to whatever best serves your organization. For teams with existing SQL Server DBAs, we operate as a specialist extension — handling the hardest architectural, performance, and availability challenges while your team maintains day-to-day operations. For lean engineering organizations without dedicated SQL Server capacity, we function as a fully managed SQL Server DBA team. In all cases, knowledge transfer is built into the engagement: we document what we build and train your team as we go.
How quickly can MinervaDB respond to a production incident?
For managed operations clients, Severity 1 (critical) SLA is a 15-minute response guarantee — 24×7, including weekends and holidays. Severity 2 incidents receive a 1-hour response commitment; Severity 3 issues are addressed within 4 hours. Emergency and break-fix SQL Server support is also available to non-retainer clients — contact us directly for immediate assistance.
Can you help migrate our database to Azure SQL or upgrade versions?
Yes — SQL Server version upgrades and cloud migrations are among our most frequently requested engagements. We begin with a pre-migration compatibility assessment, identify and resolve breaking changes in your schema and application queries, design a cutover strategy appropriate to your downtime tolerance (including fully zero-downtime upgrades via AG-based cutover), and execute the migration with validated post-migration performance benchmarking and tested rollback procedures.
Are you aligned with Microsoft or any other vendor?
No. MinervaDB is strictly vendor-neutral and earns no referral fees, reseller margins, or partnership incentives from Microsoft or any SQL Server tooling vendor. Our SQL Server support our advice is based entirely on what genuinely serves your workload — whether that is SQL Server on bare metal, Azure SQL Managed Instance, or a migration to an open-source alternative like PostgreSQL. Independence is the foundation of the trust our clients place in us.
GET STARTED TODAY
Engineer SQL Server Infrastructure You Never Have to Worry About
Talk to a MinervaDB principal engineer about your most demanding database challenge. The first conversation is always with an engineer, never a salesperson.
FURTHER READING & RELATED SQL SERVER SERVICES
SQL Server Remote DBA |
Performance Tuning |
Database Migration Services |
PostgreSQL Support |
MySQL Engineering |
Azure SQL Database Support