Fractional DBA
Senior SQL Server capability without the full-time hire.
Support for teams that need DBA judgement, cover, project help, and operational review, but do not have enough work or budget for a permanent senior DBA role.
Common scenarios
- Holiday, illness, jury duty, or parental-leave cover
- Migration, upgrade, or consolidation projects
- Internal DBA is overloaded or single point of failure
- Developers need review before database changes ship
When fractional support helps
DBA risk often appears as a capacity problem before it appears as a technical problem.
One person knows the backup process. One person understands the SQL Agent jobs. One person knows which server can be patched safely, which reporting database is fragile, and which application vendor needs warning before compatibility level changes. Then that person goes on holiday, becomes ill, sits on a jury, leaves, or is pulled into a migration project.
Fractional DBA support gives the team a practical way to add senior SQL Server judgement without turning every question into a recruitment exercise.
Operational cover
- Holiday and sickness cover
- Second pair of eyes for production changes
- Backup, restore, job, and alert review
- Escalation support for recurring SQL Server concerns
- Regular estate review and prioritisation sessions
Project support
- Migration and upgrade planning
- Compatibility-level change review
- Performance baseline before and after change
- Index, Query Store, and deployment review
- Vendor or application database assessment
Team enablement
- DBA process documentation and handover
- Coaching for accidental DBAs and developers
- Health-check follow-through
- Recurring review cadence
- Decision support for IT leaders