1. Get ready
Onboarding reviews your environment, documents your servers, contacts, maintenance windows, and escalation plan, and prioritizes the risks worth addressing first.
Senior DBAs on call, 15 minutes away
On-Call DBA gives your team a guaranteed 15-minute emergency response and a bank of on-demand hours from senior database specialists, for the worst night of the year and the projects in between.
24/7 × 365. US-based. No limit on emergency calls. Need help right now? Call (844) 282-3282.
What On-Call DBA is
On-Call DBA is an emergency and on-demand support package for organizations that run their own databases. Fortified Data guarantees a 15-minute response from a senior US-based DBA on every emergency call, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, through a dedicated line that bypasses triage, with no limit on how often you call. Alongside it, a monthly allocation of on-demand hours covers upgrades, migrations, tuning, security reviews and the work your team cannot absorb, pooled across every database in scope and rolling forward into a bank when unused.
Everything your team needs behind it
A dedicated 24/7 emergency line
Call and reach a senior DBA directly, with a guaranteed 15-minute response every day of the year.
No limit on emergency calls
Call as often as you need to. The time we spend resolving each issue is drawn from your hours.
Hours that bank
On-demand hours are added every month and pooled across every database in scope, and the hours you do not use roll forward into your bank, ready for the bigger project or the harder month.
The specialist the work needs
Troubleshooting, tuning, upgrades, migrations, security reviews, HA/DR, ETL, and architecture planning, matched to a specialist on that platform.
A head start on every call
Onboarding includes an environment review prioritized by risk and effort, an inventory of what is covered, and your contacts, maintenance windows, and escalation plan, so the DBA who answers already knows your environment.
Work inside your change control
Every remediation follows your change management process.
A post-event summary
A timeline of events and every action taken, with root cause analysis on request.
Set it up before you need it
2. Call when it matters
A senior DBA engages within 15 minutes, establishes what failed, and puts recovery options to you with their trade-offs. Your team and leadership are kept informed at every step.
3. Draw on hours for everything else
Request upgrades, tuning, migrations, and other work by ticket at any time. Requests are answered within four business hours and worked during business hours, and planned overnight work, such as overnight processes we manage for you, can be scheduled off hours.
Built for the issues that stop the business
Routine issues are handled as standard on-demand requests. Not sure which applies? Call us and we will route it with you.
- Production data loss or corruption, including a suspect database, transaction log corruption, a dropped table or accidental deletion, or a restore that has not gone to plan.
- Severe performance degradation or failure that is impairing business operations, including cluster, Always On availability group, and replication failures, and failed upgrades or patches.
- Security events that need immediate remediation at the database layer.
A response service, by design
On-Call DBA is built for teams that run their own databases. You stay in charge of watching your environment; when something goes wrong, you call, and a senior DBA is on it within 15 minutes.
On-Call DBA does not include monitoring and alerting, backup management, routine maintenance, patching, capacity and metric reporting, or account management. Those are what our managed service plans do, around the clock, so problems are found before your users notice them. Compare plans.
On-Call DBA or a managed service plan?
Choose On-Call DBA if
you have your own DBA or a capable IT team; you handle monitoring, maintenance, and patching; and you want senior specialists behind you for emergencies, projects, and the harder problems.
Choose a managed service plan if
you want us monitoring 24/7; you want maintenance, patching, and backups handled; and you want monthly reporting, regular reviews, and the environment improved over time.
Select
When you are ready for us to run the environment, Select is our recommended plan: 24/7 monitoring, proactive tuning, a Strategic Improvement Plan, and emergency response included. Move from On-Call DBA to Select whenever you are ready; the documentation and knowledge of your environment come with you.
How On-Call DBA compares
Senior judgment, sized to the work
A company can need financial strategy without needing a chief financial officer every day of the week. Database expertise works the same way. The decisions are senior; the volume of them is not full time. On-Call DBA gives you a continuing relationship with senior specialists, so the next piece of work starts with people who already know how your systems fit together.
Not another contractor
Augmented staff work under your direction, which requires someone in-house who can judge database work. Fortified Data manages its own delivery, covers its own absences, keeps your environment in team documentation, and stands behind the quality of its work. Staff augmentation is the better answer when you have an experienced DBA who needs another pair of hands for a defined period. On-Call DBA is the better answer when you need senior judgment you do not have.
How pricing works
A monthly fee for your on-demand hours, with emergency coverage included at no separate charge, plus a one-time onboarding and environment review. Time spent resolving an emergency is drawn from your hours.
Who keeps a DBA on call
- Teams strong on IT and thin on databases.
- An internal DBA who needs backup for nights, weekends, and vacations.
- Organizations with no after-hours database rotation.
- A backlog of upgrades, tuning, or remediation the team cannot absorb.
- Seasonal demand: retail peaks, quarter ends, enrollment periods.
- Regulated environments where an outage becomes an incident report.
Common questions about On-Call DBA
How quickly do you respond?
Emergencies: within 15 minutes, from a senior DBA, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, through a dedicated emergency line that bypasses triage. On-demand requests, including those submitted overnight: within four business hours.
Is there a limit on emergency calls?
No. Call as often as you need to. The time spent resolving each issue is drawn from your bank of hours.
Do you monitor our databases?
Not under On-Call DBA. It is a response service: you call, we respond. Continuous monitoring, maintenance, and reporting are part of every managed service plan.
What counts as an emergency?
Production data loss or corruption, including a suspect database, transaction log corruption, a dropped table or accidental deletion, or a restore that has not gone to plan. Severe performance degradation or failure that is impairing business operations, including cluster, Always On availability group, and replication failures, and failed upgrades or patches. Security events that need immediate remediation at the database layer. Routine issues are handled as standard on-demand requests. If you are not sure which applies, call and we will route it with you.
How do the hours work?
On-demand hours are added every month and pooled across every database in scope, and unused hours roll forward into your bank. Emergency response, root cause analysis, and on-demand work all draw from them, and additional hours are available whenever you need them.
What can hours be used for?
Troubleshooting and alert investigation, performance tuning and index strategy, upgrades, migrations, and consolidations, database development and change management support, user and role management, security reviews, corruption response and recovery, high availability and disaster recovery strategy and testing, lifecycle management, integration and ETL, reporting and analytics support, future state architecture and modernization planning, and custom scripts and maintenance routines. Work that needs a defined deliverable, a fixed timeline, or dedicated project management is scoped as a separate consulting project.
When does on-demand work happen?
Submit requests at any time. They are answered within four business hours and worked Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern. Planned overnight work, such as overnight processes we manage for you, can be scheduled off hours using your on-demand hours. Emergencies are 24/7 × 365.
How does On-Call DBA start?
With a one-time onboarding and environment review, so the DBA who answers your first call already knows your environment.
Can we move to a managed service plan later?
Yes, whenever you are ready. Select is our recommended plan, and the documentation and knowledge of your environment come with you. Compare plans.
Which platforms are covered?
SQL Server and Azure SQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL, on premises or in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
Will you work with our internal team?
Yes. Your people stay in the decisions; a database specialist makes the database calls.
Arrange coverage before you need it
An agreement in place today means the DBA who answers already has your access details, escalation contacts, and recovery objectives.
Let us show you what's possible.