Database Administration Archives

We Repair What Your AI Fixed: Where AI Belongs in Your Automation

October 22, 2026

We’ve all tasted the fruit. AI is awesome. It is astounding what it can do, how much it can do, and how correct it can be. It is also equally scary and world-impacting, and we can all feel the ground turning a little fluid under our feet. I don’t have big answers, but I do

Who Would I Use for DBA as a Service If Straight Path Wasn’t an Option?

September 22, 2026

Whenever you are shopping, you should look at a few options. I sometimes forget that step, and then regret it afterwards a bit too often. It’s really important to do that when it comes to choosing the firm who will be your Remote DBA or DBA as a Service partner. I want to do something

What Should Happen in the First 90 Days of a Remote DBA Relationship

September 15, 2026

In the first 90 days of a healthy DBA as a Service relationship, the provider should have a thorough understanding of your environment, establish reliable access and monitoring, identify and plan for your most serious risks, begin reducing recurring disasters, and settle into a working rhythm with clear priorities and communication. By Day 90 you

Hiring a Full-Time DBA vs DBA as a Service

August 31, 2026

I could build you a calculator right now that proves we are always the cheaper choice... Here is how I would do it. I would go find the highest DBA salary survey I could get my hands on, one of the ones that samples a couple dozen people in expensive metros and reports it as

How Much Does DBA as a Service Cost? What’s Included, What Uses Hours, and Why We Price It This Way

August 24, 2026

Officially – we publish our DBA as a Service pricing because we’d rather you know what this costs and how it works before we ever get on a sales call. Unofficially? I put the pricing up there because I HATE looking for a service and seeing “contact us for pricing.” I know what’s coming next,

Why SQL Server Health Check Findings Don’t Get Implemented (And What to Ask Before You Buy One)

August 18, 2026

We inherit a lot of SQL Server environments. And a thing that happens more often than I’d like is that we find a completed SQL Server health check sitting in the environment already. A pretty darn good one, too. The findings are right, the recommendations make sense, and a lot of the time we know

Are Your SQL Servers Actually Healthy? LinkedIn Live Event 8/19/26

August 17, 2026

3 Times You Should NOT Hire a DBA as a Service Provider

August 11, 2026

We make money selling DBA as a Service here at Straight Path, but I’d rather not take your money if it isn’t a perfect fit. Being transparent aligns with all of our values, so why not tell folks when a client isn’t an ideal fit. There are at least three situations where, if you called

I Restored a SQL Server Database and Became a Sysadmin

August 10, 2026

…on a fully patched SQL Server 2014. And “fully” patched is why I’m writing this post. You know the thriller movies where they keep looking for the creepy stalker type? The phone calls keep coming, the signs of stalking are there, and they do a bunch of digging and through the taps or traps they

Hey Sysadmins & Integrators – Look Before You Jump Into the Next Virtualization Platform

August 5, 2026

The Broadcom acquisition of VMware pushed licensing costs up across the tech sector, forcing IT leaders and MSPs to explore alternative hypervisors. Alternatives like Proxmox, Hyper-V, Nutanix, HPE Morpheus or moving directly to cloud platforms like Azure are rapidly gaining traction as teams rush to eliminate the crazy spend Broadcom is looking for or their

Database Administration Blog Posts