SQL Server Health Check

Most database problems are quiet until they are not. A backup job that has been silently failing for months, a login with far more access than it needs, a log file that will fill the disk next quarter: none of these cause a ticket today, and all of them can stop the business later. A health check finds them on your schedule instead of theirs.

Health checks are especially useful after a key IT person leaves, before a SQL Server upgrade or cloud migration, after an outage, when an auditor asks about database controls, or simply when nobody can remember the last time anyone looked closely. It is also the usual first step before remote DBA services, because it establishes a baseline.

Backups are the first and most important area. We confirm that full, differential, and log backups are running on the schedule your recovery needs, that they are stored somewhere a server failure or ransomware attack cannot reach, and that they can actually be restored. A backup that has never been restored is an assumption, not a safety net.

Security comes next: who has administrator rights, whether old employee and vendor logins are still active, whether the built-in sa account is protected, and whether sensitive data is encrypted where it should be. Then performance, where we look at the waits the server spends most time on, the most expensive queries, missing and unused indexes, and signs of memory or storage pressure.

Configuration covers settings that are often left at installation defaults even though Microsoft recommends changing them, such as maximum memory, parallelism thresholds, and tempdb layout. Finally we review versions and patch levels against Microsoft's support dates, SQL Agent jobs and their failure history, database integrity checks, and the disk and log growth trends that predict when you will run out of space.

A yearly review is a good habit, but some situations call for one sooner. If any of these sound familiar, it is worth looking before a small issue turns into an outage or lost data.

• Nobody can say when a backup was last restored successfully.
• The person who set up or managed the server has left the company.
• The server runs a SQL Server version past, or close to, Microsoft's end of support.
• Users complain the application slows down at certain times of day or month.
• Disk space alerts have become routine, or log files keep growing.
• An auditor, insurer, or customer has asked about your database controls.
• A migration, upgrade, or new application is planned in the next few months.
• Several people share one administrator login, or vendor accounts have broad access.

• An executive summary in plain language: the overall picture and the top risks.
• Every finding rated by severity, with what it means for the business if left alone.
• Specific recommended fixes, with effort estimates and suggested order.
• A list of quick wins your own team can do right away.
• Technical detail for your IT staff or whoever will carry out the work.

You own the report and can act on it however you like: with your own team, with us, or with another provider.

Health check prices depend on the number of servers and how deep the review goes, and there is no reliable industry-wide average. For planning, US SQL Server specialists publish consulting rates that work out to roughly $237 to $350 per hour: Red9 lists 20 hours for $4,995 and Straight Path lists 20 hours for $7,000 (checked October 2026). As an illustrative scenario only, a review assumed at 12 hours would be about $2,844 to $4,200 at those rates. These are other firms' published prices, not ours; we quote a fixed scope after a call.

We are in Oklahoma City and run health checks remotely for companies statewide. SQL Server commonly runs behind Oklahoma energy, healthcare, banking, manufacturing, logistics, and public-sector systems, and we come on-site in OKC or Tulsa for the walkthrough meeting if you would like. Organizations in regulated industries, such as healthcare providers, banks, credit unions, and public agencies, often use the report as evidence of database controls for auditors and examiners. Smaller companies use it to decide whether they need ongoing help at all. Either way, the report is written so a non-technical owner or board can understand the risks, while the technical appendix gives your IT staff or vendor everything they need to act. If your environment includes servers at several sites, such as branches or plants around the state, we cover them in one engagement and one report.