Virtual-DBA came out of XTIVIA’s response to an urgent need in the market to limit travel during the dotcom bubble burst. It was vital for our customers to conserve travel resources, both time and money, while getting immediate response on database issues. In that moment, XTIVIA became an industry leader by establishing Virtual-DBA as a low-cost solution that delivered significant value. This continued to serve us well through 9/11 and the 2008 recession as well. Today, we have expanded our capabilities to the point where we can handle just about anything database-related from remote locations.
Technology is the remote bridge that connects all aspects of business, starting with data. Data is the lifeblood of business. During such times as environmental changes, dynamic market conditions, lean resources, and other factors that impact how business happens, Virtual-DBA stands behind our customers with deep expertise, broad skills, and leading-edge insights related to all things database.
Services That Evolved to Meet Customer Needs
Health Checks
Ensure systems are configured properly for performance, availability, and security. Having expert reviews done on a consistent basis gives you options for improvement not only for your database environment but also your best practices. Getting an overall view of your system is valuable, especially if you don’t have a baseline for comparison. Our DBAs average 17 years of experience, so if there are any errant messages or signals that something needs attention, they catch it and bring it to our customers’ attention.
Performance Tuning
Guarantee you are getting optimum yield from your databases. Regularly assessing your database system — including application, capacity, and hardware performance demands — gives you a picture of the effectiveness and efficiency of your computing environment. This is true if you are on physical hardware or running your database in the cloud. Throughout the performance tuning process, just like tuning a musical instrument, additional “symptoms” may appear in the process; Virtual-DBA’s experts give our customers the suggestions, ideas, and action plans to improve operations.
Migrations
Whether updating from a database version that is no longer supported, migrating to the cloud, or moving from one database platform to another, are handled expeditiously and on our customers’ timeframe. Our experts are available around the clock because, as you already know, they are virtual. That means whatever the need, XTIVIA’s DBAs can meet it.
Cloud
Companies are also discovering how cloud can benefit the bottom line. Your cloud environment could be a hybrid with some on-prem activities or all in the cloud; in either case, it’s important you have the right expertise and support to make the move. Our specialists are all certified and credentialed in the specific platform(s) our customers choose for their database and cloud environments. Our team can help you move to the cloud and support you once you are there.
Disaster Recovery
Another vital service that XTIVIA offers is around “disaster recovery.” A disaster is not just a pandemic but a flooded server room or a fire or an earthquake or a tree caving in a building. In Colorado, the data center for a whole county — birth certificates, death certificates, food stamp approvals, domestic violence records, etc. — were all close to a fire that affected the database. Had that fire disrupted those local database servers, unique and mission-critical data could have been irretrievably lost. The Virtual-DBA team has the capability to not only help you create a disaster-recovery plan, implement it and then monitor and support the database components, but to also help you (at least) annually test your plan.
Our services all evolve to meet the needs of our customers. Another important service our customers need is to augment staff DBA for vacation or training as a retention strategy, and also to be available if the staff DBAs are out due to unexpected illness. Additionally, imagine having the ability to focus your internal team on progressive company projects while your database health has the needed and proper attention from virtual DBAs. By having remote managed services for their database environments, our customers save time, money, and resources while having expertise in monitoring, supporting, and troubleshooting in real-time.
Special note: As of the writing of this piece, the U.S. and countries around the world are confronting COVID-19 and its effects. During this time, though not unique to how we deliver, we are here to meet your database needs. Usually our clients opt for our services to be performed remotely to save on the expenses associated with our DBAs traveling on site, in today’s current crisis it’s saving clients a whole lot more than money.