Comprehensive review of your SQL Server infrastructure against industry best practices. Includes a 48-hour performance baseline to identify infrastructure bottlenecks impacting performance.
Our SQL Server health check is a comprehensive examination of your entire database infrastructure - from the hardware layer through the OS configuration and into the SQL Server instance itself. We review every layer of the stack to identify misconfigurations, performance bottlenecks, and security risks.
We track and analyse over 200 OS and SQL Server performance counters across a 48-hour representative sampling period, measuring storage performance, memory utilisation, CPU throughput, network metrics, and SQL-specific counters against acceptable parameters.
Comprehensive review including 48-hour performance baseline. We find critical misconfigurations in 97% of all reviews completed.
Contact us for a tailored quote based on your environment.
Review of operating system configuration - page file, storage, network, build levels. SQL Server instance settings - parallelism, memory configuration. Database-level checks including missing indexes, unused non-clustered indexes, and configuration errors.
While many issues stem from configuration, our health checks conduct a comprehensive hardware performance baseline analysis. We track over 200 counters across a 48–72 hour sampling period to identify infrastructure-level bottlenecks in storage, memory, CPU, and network.
The health check provides insights into current security misconfigurations, including identification of potential security risk areas and signs of breaches. We examine SQL Server error logs, authentication configurations, and encryption settings.
Receive a detailed report containing all findings and remediation recommendations - akin to a Microsoft SQL RAP. Every finding includes severity, business impact, and step-by-step remediation guidance.
Every health check follows a rigorous assessment of your SQL Server environment against industry best practices. Here's exactly what we review.
Over 200 OS and SQL Server performance counters are collected across a representative sampling period to identify infrastructure-level bottlenecks and establish baseline metrics for storage, CPU, memory, and network throughput.
Review of all SQL Server configuration settings including parallelism (MAXDOP, Cost Threshold for Parallelism), memory allocation (min/max server memory), tempDB configuration, and advanced settings against best practice for your workload type (OLTP vs OLAP).
Verification of all SQL Server services including SQL Server Agent, Integration Services, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, and Full-Text Search. Review of service account configurations, startup types, and dependencies.
Assessment of index fragmentation levels across all databases, review of index maintenance jobs, identification of missing indexes, duplicate indexes, and unused non-clustered indexes contributing to write overhead.
Review of aged statistics that may be causing suboptimal query execution plans, and verification of regular DBCC CHECKDB integrity checks across all databases.
Assessment of backup strategy against your Recovery Point Objective and Recovery Time Objective requirements. Verification of backup chain integrity, backup compression, and restore testing procedures.
Review of SQL Server memory configuration, buffer pool usage, plan cache efficiency, and identification of memory pressure indicators including page life expectancy and lazy writes.
In-depth analysis of SQL Server wait statistics to identify the top resource bottlenecks - including PAGEIOLATCH, CXPACKET, LCK, ASYNC_NETWORK_IO, and SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD waits that indicate performance issues.
Review of all SQL Server maintenance plans and backup job configurations against best practices. Verification of backup schedules, retention policies, and job failure alerting.
Review of Windows Server configuration including power plans, disk allocation unit sizes, RAID configurations, page file sizing, antivirus exclusions, and Instant File Initialisation settings.
High-level security analysis including authentication mode review (Windows vs Mixed Mode), SQL Server audit configuration, service account permissions, and identification of overly permissive login configurations.
Analysis of the most expensive queries by CPU, duration, and logical reads. Review of query execution plans to identify missing indexes, implicit conversions, key lookups, and parameter sniffing issues.
Investigation of blocking chains and deadlock patterns across specified databases. Identification of long-running transactions, lock escalation issues, and recommendations for resolution.
Analysis of Windows Event Logs, SQL Server Error Logs, and SQL Server Agent Logs for recurring errors, warnings, failed logins, and other indicators of underlying issues.
Review of data files (MDF, NDF) and log file configurations - file sizing, auto-growth settings, virtual log file counts, file placement across storage, and tempDB file configuration.
Database and server capacity projections based on current growth rates, storage utilisation trends, and planned business changes. Recommendations for proactive capacity management.
Review of SQL Server configurations specific to your workload type - ensuring OLTP environments are optimised for transaction throughput and OLAP environments for analytical query performance.
Assessment of Transparent Data Encryption status, encryption key management, SSL/TLS configuration for connections, and backup encryption settings.
Execution and review of the SQL Server Best Practices Analyser (BPA) findings - a Microsoft tool that identifies configuration issues and deviations from recommended SQL Server best practices.
From initial engagement through to actionable recommendations - here's what to expect.
A brief discovery call to understand your SQL Server environment, specific concerns, and what you're hoping to get out of the health check.
We deploy our performance baseline collectors across your SQL Server instances. Over 200 OS and SQL Server counters are tracked across a representative 48-hour sampling period.
Our DBAs analyse the collected data - configuration settings, wait statistics, index health, security posture, backup integrity, and hardware performance - against industry best practices.
A comprehensive report is compiled documenting every finding with severity rating, business impact assessment, and step-by-step remediation guidance. Akin to a Microsoft SQL RAP.
We walk you through the findings, answer questions, and help prioritise which issues to address first based on risk and business impact.
We help you plan the remediation schedule and can provide quotes for implementation work. You'll know exactly what needs fixing and in what order.
Our health check is a comprehensive 4-hour review covering storage, network, CPU and memory configurations, database fragmentation, index maintenance, backup integrity, security analysis, wait stats, query performance, and over 200 performance counters across a 48-hour baseline sampling period.
SQL Server health checks start from $2,499 ex-GST per instance. This includes a comprehensive expert review, a 48-hour performance baseline analysis, and a detailed report with findings and remediation recommendations. Please contact us for a tailored quote based on your specific environment and requirements.
We find critical misconfigurations in 97% of all health checks completed. Common findings include suboptimal memory configuration, missing indexes, outdated statistics, incorrect parallelism settings, backup integrity issues, and security misconfigurations.
The health check itself involves 4 hours of expert review. The performance baseline requires 48 hours of data collection on your server. You'll receive a comprehensive report with all findings and recommendations shortly after the review is complete.
Yes, health checks are available as a one-off engagement under our Block of Hours model. Many clients choose to follow up with ongoing managed support after seeing the findings, but there is no obligation or lock-in.
Find out what's really going on inside your SQL Server environment.
Our health checks uncover critical misconfigurations in 97% of reviews.