SQL Server DBA Services
Last reviewed by Tyler Eastridge
AceMQ provides Microsoft SQL Server DBA services for production estates: remote DBA cover, performance tuning, high availability with Always On availability groups, patching and version upgrades, and 24/7 support with a 15-minute emergency response. We deliver it with partner SQL Server specialists, and AceMQ holds the engagement, the SLA and the escalation path. Managed SQL Server, where AceMQ runs the instances for you, is a separate service.
A senior engineer, not an SDR. No sales sequence attached.
Without hiring another DBA or moving off SQL ServerFor production incident cover, see AceMQ SQL Server 24/7 support.
Customers
Partners
The Problem
Eight SQL Server problems teams bring to a DBA service, from a transaction log that cannot truncate and an availability group replica that has fallen behind to plans that regress after an upgrade. If one describes your week, that is where the review starts.
The transaction log has filled its drive, and log_reuse_wait_desc shows LOG_BACKUP, ACTIVE_TRANSACTION or AVAILABILITY_REPLICA
An Always On secondary has fallen behind, so automatic failover is not available and nobody has measured what a forced failover would lose
A query that ran in seconds for months now takes minutes after a patch, an upgrade or a compatibility level change
Nightly index rebuilds run for hours, block the application and still leave statistics stale
Backups report success, but no one has restored one to a scratch server, and DBCC CHECKDB has not finished on the largest database in months
tempdb allocation contention appears at peak load, with PAGELATCH waits on a handful of system pages
SQL Server 2016 is past extended support and an auditor has asked for the cumulative update level of every instance
The renewal is due and nobody can say how many cores the workload actually needs
A good fit if you run SQL Server in production, on your own servers or in your own cloud account, and want senior cover, a second pair of eyes or the pager taken off your team.
Not a fit for small teams with non-critical workloads. AceMQ is not a budget consultancy: we work with enterprises running business-critical and compliance-heavy SQL Server.
How it breaks, and the fix
In an Always On availability group, automatic failover only works to a synchronous-commit secondary that is synchronized. If the only replica left is asynchronous and behind, the only option is a forced failover, and the log it never received is lost.
Primary failure in an availability group
Application, listener, one primary, two secondaries
Clients connect through the listener to the primary. Replica 2 is a synchronous-commit secondary and stays synchronized. Replica 1 is asynchronous, a few seconds behind, and used for disaster recovery.
The primary fails and replica 2 is not set up for automatic failover. Someone forces failover to replica 1, which is far behind, so the transactions it never received are lost and the old primary's databases come back suspended.
Replica 2 is the automatic failover target and is monitored for synchronization, so it takes over without data loss and the listener points clients at it. Replica 1 lag is tracked against the recovery point objective.
Microsoft's documentation sets the rules: automatic failover needs a synchronous-commit replica, set to automatic failover, that is currently synchronized, and a quorate cluster, and asynchronous-commit replicas support only forced failover. A suspended or lagging secondary also keeps the primary's transaction log from truncating, which shows up as AVAILABILITY_REPLICA in log_reuse_wait_desc and can fill the log drive. An AceMQ availability group review checks the mode and quorum of every replica, tracks lag from last_commit_time, confirms that logins and jobs exist on each replica, and rehearses failover and restore on a non-production copy first.
Our Services
AceMQ's SQL Server work falls into five lines: remote DBA administration, performance tuning, high availability, patching and upgrades, and a fixed-scope health check. Any of them can roll into 24/7 support with a 15-minute emergency SLA.
Day-to-day SQL Server database administration by experienced specialists, for teams without a full-time database administrator or that need cover for the one they have.
A wait-statistics-first approach: find what the instance is waiting on, then the queries behind it, before anyone adds indexes or cores.
Design, review and troubleshooting of availability groups and failover cluster instances, plus disaster recovery with log shipping or a secondary site, including the failover nobody has rehearsed.
A patch calendar you can show an auditor, and a planned route off versions Microsoft has stopped supporting.
A fixed-scope review of one estate or one instance, with written findings and a ranked fix list.
Senior engineers on your account, a 15-minute emergency response, no ticket routing and no junior triage.
24/7 Support
AceMQ SQL Server support gives you a senior engineer and a 15-minute first response when production is down, 24/7. Lower severities get 1-hour, 4-hour and next-day responses, and every P1 ends with a written root-cause analysis.
P1 escalation path
A replay of one P1, from the first page to the written root-cause analysis
15-minute P1 response, 24/7.
A response time, not a resolution time.
P1 opened, on-call engineer paged
Phone, email or Slack reaches the on-call senior engineer directly, whether the incident is in RabbitMQ, Kafka, Redis, PostgreSQL or Kubernetes. No web form, no tier-1 queue.
Senior engineer on your bridge
A senior engineer who already knows your environment joins a live bridge, so nobody has to re-explain your topology.
Specialists across the stack join
When an incident crosses components, the engineers who know each one join. For RabbitMQ, the path runs to the core team.
Written root-cause analysis
Root cause, the fix applied and the prevention steps, delivered after every P1.
Beyond SLAs — the model behind senior-only, zero-cold-start expert access.
Tickets go to senior engineers briefed on your environment, not an anonymous queue. The proposal states who does the work.
Any ticket can be escalated to a live session with an engineer through calendar booking. No gatekeeping and no approval step.
Proactive alerts on critical bugs and CVEs affecting your exact version, with version compliance monitoring so you're never caught off guard.
How It Works
A SQL Server engagement runs in four stages: scope and access, a baseline with written findings before anything changes, staged changes alongside your team, and a handover or ongoing cover. Timing is agreed in the quote, not promised in advance.
Agreed in the quote
A call about your instances, editions, versions and cover hours, then read-only access to a representative set of servers. We agree who is on the engagement, including the partner specialists, before work starts.
Before any change
Backup and restore evidence, CHECKDB history, wait statistics, Query Store or plan cache top consumers, availability group health and the patch level of every instance, written so your own leadership can sign it off.
Per the plan
Fixes are staged and reversible: backup and maintenance job changes, index and statistics work, configuration changes and failover rehearsals, run on a non-production copy first and in a window you approve.
Ongoing, if you want it
Runbooks for restore, failover and the log-full path stay with you. From there the work can continue as 24/7 support, scheduled reviews, or AceMQ running the instances through managed SQL Server.
A senior engineer, not an SDR. No sales sequence attached.
Typical engagements
Cases where SQL Server was part of the estate: change data capture and messaging around SQL Server sources, plus typical-engagement scenarios that describe how an AceMQ SQL Server engagement runs. Scenario cards are marked as service use cases, not past customers.
SaaS Platform Team
A typical engagement for a team on SQL Server 2016 whose applications are written in T-SQL: assess Babelfish compatibility, choose between a bridge and full conversion, and plan the cutover.
PostgreSQLSQL ServerBabelfishAWS DMSRegional Logistics Operator
A typical engagement: reviewing an Always On availability group that spans two sites, so the first real failover is not the first test of its replica modes, quorum and lag tracking.
Manufacturing Group
A typical engagement: inventory a mixed SQL Server 2016 estate after extended support ended, then decide per instance between upgrading, Extended Security Updates and Azure SQL Managed Instance.
SaaS Platform Team
A typical engagement: AceMQ takes over operations of a SaaS platform's SQL Server estate in the customer's own AWS account, with the data and the licences staying with the customer.
Benefits Administration Provider
A typical engagement: a read-only review of a slow SQL Server batch workload that ranks the waits, finds the queries behind them in Query Store and hands the DBA team a tested change list.
Global Automotive Manufacturer
Replacing fragile SQL-trigger-based ingestion with a reliable event-driven architecture for plant-floor data movement and low-latency operations.
RabbitMQMQTT
KafkaSQL Server
KubernetesSolutions
AceMQ covers SQL Server in four tiers, from 24/7 support to fully managed, with projects alongside: performance work, upgrades, a fixed-scope health check and version migrations.
Projects
Fixed-scope work led by a senior engineer: architecture and new builds, a health check of what you run today, or a migration with a reversible cutover.
Support and managed services
Four tiers of ongoing cover once you are live. Each tier hands more of the day-to-day work to AceMQ, from a 15-minute emergency SLA to AceMQ hosting and running SQL Server for you.
Compare the four SQL Server support tiersSide by side
An in-house DBA owns everything, and cover is only as deep as the team. AceMQ DBA support adds senior cover and a second pair of eyes to servers you still run. A cloud-managed instance such as Azure SQL Managed Instance hands the platform to Microsoft, and your team still owns schema, queries and workload design.
| Question | In-house DBA | AceMQ DBA support (Tiers 1 and 2) | Cloud-managed (Azure SQL Managed Instance, Amazon RDS) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who holds the pager at 3am? | Your team, whoever is on rota. | Your team, with a senior engineer on a live bridge within 15 minutes, 24/7. | The provider for the platform. Queries, locking and workload stay with your team. |
| Who patches the instance? | Your DBA, on your calendar. | Your team, with AceMQ planning and testing cumulative updates before production. | The provider applies updates on its own schedule. |
| What happens at end of extended support? | You upgrade or buy Extended Security Updates yourself. | AceMQ plans and tests the upgrade or the ESU route. Microsoft supplies the updates. | The platform keeps moving to a current engine, and you test your application against it. |
| Who designs high availability? | Your DBA, often without a second opinion. | AceMQ reviews Always On modes, quorum and lag tracking, and rehearses failover with you. | Built in and preconfigured by the provider. |
| Can you reach the operating system? | Yes. | Yes. Your servers, your access. | No. SQL Server Agent works, but the OS is the provider's, and Reporting Services does not run on the instance. |
| What does it cost? | Salaries and hiring time. | A support contract priced on SLA, scope and deployment, with quote-only managed options if you want AceMQ to run it. | Compute, storage and licence on the cloud invoice. |
| How do you leave? | Nothing to exit. | Runbooks and documentation are yours. | Azure SQL Managed Instance backups restore only to another instance or to SQL Server 2022 or 2025, so plan the way out when you plan the way in. |
Thinking about Azure SQL Managed Instance in particular? The managed SQL Server page sets out when it is the better choice. For version dates and ESU options read SQL Server 2016 end of life.
One partner, not five
SQL Server rarely fails in isolation. AceMQ covers the full surrounding infrastructure — so one team owns the whole path instead of pointing at each other.
Guides, articles and comparisons
Guides from AceMQ on SQL Server end of life and performance tuning, plus the AceMQ services for the databases and pipelines that usually sit next to it.
FAQs
Five answers on SQL Server from AceMQ: what the DBA service covers and who delivers it, what to do about SQL Server 2016, Always On, support versus managed, and the environments we work in.
Still have questions about SQL Server? Email an Expert
AceMQ covers remote DBA administration, backup and disaster recovery, database security reviews, performance tuning, high availability with Always On availability groups and failover cluster instances, patching and version upgrades, and 24/7 support with a 15-minute emergency response. AceMQ delivers it with partner SQL Server specialists. AceMQ holds the contract, the SLA and the escalation path, and tells you who is on the engagement before work starts.
Microsoft's lifecycle page lists SQL Server 2016 extended support as ended on 14 July 2026 (checked 31 October 2026). Your options are to upgrade, to subscribe to Extended Security Updates through Azure Arc or on SQL Server on Azure VMs, or to move to Azure SQL Managed Instance. ESUs carry critical security fixes only, and Microsoft lists three years of them, to July 2029. AceMQ plans the route and tests it. Microsoft supplies the updates.
Yes. Automatic failover needs a synchronous-commit secondary that is synchronized, and an asynchronous replica can only be failed over by force, with possible data loss. We check the mode and quorum of every replica, track lag against your recovery point objective, confirm that logins and jobs exist on every replica, and rehearse a failover before you need one.
With support or remote DBA cover, your team still owns the servers and AceMQ is the senior escalation path and reviewer. With managed SQL Server, AceMQ operates the instances: monitoring, patching, backups, failover and the pager, in your cloud account or data centre (Tier 3) or on infrastructure AceMQ runs (Tier 4). Most teams start with support and move up a tier when they want the pager gone.
Yes: SQL Server on Windows Server and on Linux, on virtual machines, bare metal or in your own AWS or Azure account, standalone, as failover cluster instances or in availability groups. For Azure SQL Managed Instance and Amazon RDS for SQL Server the provider runs the platform; we help with schema, query and workload design, and what is in scope is agreed in the quote.
Yes. AceMQ works on SQL Server in two ways: ad hoc engagements for a defined piece of work, such as a health check, an upgrade or an incident, or an annual contract that covers 24/7 support and proactive reviews. Many teams start ad hoc and move to an annual contract once the first engagement is done.
Every AceMQ proposal is tailored to your requirements: your SQL Server environment, the SLA you need, the hours of cover and the scope of work. Most contracts run $24,000–72,000 a year, depending on the SLA, the scope and how SQL Server is deployed, with aggressive discounts when several technologies share one contract. Request a quote and AceMQ replies within 1 hour.
Let's talk
Tell us what you run, which versions and how much of the day-to-day you want to hand over. A senior engineer scopes it with you, with partner SQL Server specialists named before work starts. Quote requests answered within 1 hour.
Production incident right now?Email a SQL Server Architect
Send us a message and we'll follow up within 1 hour — or book a free 30-min consultation directly.
305-204-2607info@acemq.comPrefer to talk now? Call us directly or use the consultation tab to find a time that works.
