We Sell Green Checkmarks

Expert SQL Server Consulting

Straight Path’s 17 FTEs are SQL Server consultants – many with 20-30 years of experience. Offering Microsoft SQL Server database troubleshooting, monitoring and maintenance, migrations, and upgrades from small businesses to large enterprises. SQL Server consulting is our full-time job – this isn’t a side gig or a one-person show.

We Sell Green Checkmarks

Our consultants are SQL Server experts who can solve your SQL Server problems and keep them from coming back.

“Database management has never been this easy. The Straight Path team is full of SQL Server database gurus who can help you speed it up, sort it out or set it up right. Client satisfaction has increased because problems are solved and workflows are positively impacted. As a result, I am sleeping like a baby knowing our databases are being watched and managed diligently by our SQL Server consulting team. I don’t know what we’d do without them.”

Dean Tammam, Red Key Solutions

SQL Server Consulting Services

DBA as a Service

Remote, senior DBAs and SQL Server consultants are on your team, not your payroll. 15-minute P1 SLA. Priced per hour, not by instance.

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Cloud

We can plan and execute your move to the cloud. We can optimize your costs.

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Upgrades

Expert, painless, set-it-and-forget-it SQL Server upgrades.

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sp_check – Free SQL Server Resources

Our SQL Server consultants have developed a set of community tools that help keep your SQL Server secure and healthy. They’re free, easy to use, and ungated. We use them in our own consulting engagements – you can use them also.

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Your Silent Face: The Illusion of the Safety of “Never Patching” Your SQL Servers.

No hearing, or breathing… No movement, no colors… Just silence… Sounds peaceful. Sounds serene. And in a world where entropy didn’t exist, it could even stay that way. That’s not our world, though. Our SQL Servers (in whatever flavor they exist) don’t live in utopia. They live in a world where bad actors are trying … Read more
SQL Server Transaction Log Management

How To Manage The SQL Server Transaction Log File

“Help! My SQL Server transaction log file has run out of space on my SQL Server!”, “Why is my SQL Server Log file so big?”, “How do I shrink my SQL LDF?” – I hear these questions all the time. I’ve been blogging since 2009 and way back then I wrote some posts about shrinking, … Read more
DevOps - Don't forget the ops

DevOps: Don’t Forget The Ops

I want to commend the team at GitLab.com – they had an issue that took down a key database and everything else with it effectively and when they came back, there was data not coming back. This happens. This happens in “Traditional” 1.0 IT companies (ask my usual airline, Delta, they’ll tell you two stories … Read more
Optimize for Ad Hoc Workloads

Optimize For Ad Hoc Workloads – Enable or not?

With today’s Straight Up SQL Server tip, I want to talk about a setting I have so far only ever recommended to enable: Optimize for Ad Hoc Workloads. Rather than just make a suggestion, I want to keep in the spirit of the tips for beginner approach to the series and describe a little of … Read more
I'm moving to Azure

Dr. Cloud-Move or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cloud

With apologies to Mr. Kubrick for my title, I’ll give you a little honest backstory. I’ve been working with SQL Server for 17 years now. Mostly in the box, on-premises. I’ve done all sorts of things with SQL Server. Always heading back to DBA, performance tuning, high availability, etc. My career owes a lot to … Read more