Monthly health report
System health, the incidents of the month and what caused them, and the optimization opportunities found, written to be read by someone who was not in the room.
SQL Server and Azure SQL
SQL Server is the platform this firm was built on, and it is still the one most of its clients run. Fortified Data stabilizes, tunes, and modernizes SQL Server estates on premises, in Azure, and across both at once, from instance configuration up to the licensing position underneath it.
On premises, Azure, and hybrid, by the same team.
What Fortified Data does on SQL Server
Fortified Data provides managed services, consulting, and assessments for Microsoft SQL Server and the Azure SQL family. The work covers monitoring and incident response, query and index tuning, patching and security hardening, backup and recovery, Always On availability groups and failover clustering, version upgrades and migrations, Azure SQL Database and Managed Instance, the SSIS, SSRS, and SSAS stack, and the licensing position underneath all of it, on premises, in Azure, in AWS, and across hybrid deployments.
Most SQL Server engagements open with one of three questions. Why is the application slower than it was a year ago, would the recovery plan actually work if it were needed, and is the licensing correct. The three are related more often than they look: an estate that has grown by instance is usually slower, harder to recover, and overlicensed at the same time.
This page states what Fortified Data does on SQL Server rather than what SQL Server is. The configurations, the version range, and the deliverables are below, and none of them is a description of the product.
The work on a SQL Server estate
Six areas, covered continuously under a managed service and individually as project work.
Monitoring and incident response
Real-time monitoring of every instance with alerting on performance, availability, and security thresholds, and remediation attached to the alert rather than a notification nobody owns.
Query and index tuning
Execution plan analysis, index design and maintenance, statistics, and memory, CPU, and I/O configuration, applied as continuous work rather than as a response to a complaint.
High availability and disaster recovery
Always On availability groups, failover cluster instances, database mirroring, and log shipping, designed and configured against your recovery time and recovery point objectives.
Backup, recovery, and consistency
Backup strategy design, verification that jobs completed, consistency checking with DBCC, and recovery testing that establishes the backups restore rather than that they ran.
Patching and security hardening
Scheduled patching inside your maintenance windows, plus Transparent Data Encryption, Always Encrypted, access control, and audit logging configured to hold without costing throughput.
Upgrades, migrations, and consolidation
Version upgrades, moves to Azure or AWS, heterogeneous migrations from other engines, and instance consolidation to reduce both licensing cost and the number of things that can fail.
Versions, editions, and deployments
What is supported, and what that support means
Fortified Data supports SQL Server 2012 through 2022 under a managed service, and works on versions older than that as a migration or modernization engagement rather than as indefinite life support. An instance past its support date receives no security patches, which makes its version the first finding in any security review of the estate.
Edition and deployment matter as much as version. Core counts, virtualization, passive failover rights, and Azure Hybrid Benefit decide what the estate costs, and instance consolidation is frequently the largest saving available on it.
- SQL Server 2012 through 2022, with a migration path off 2008 and 2008 R2
- Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and SQL Server on Azure virtual machines
- Amazon RDS for SQL Server
- Always On availability groups and failover cluster instances
- Database mirroring and log shipping
- Integration, Reporting, and Analysis Services (SSIS, SSRS, SSAS)
- Azure Synapse Analytics and Azure Data Factory
- Power BI integration
- Hybrid deployments spanning on premises and cloud
Runs on
On premises
Microsoft Azure
AWS
Hybrid
What you receive
Evidence, on a cadence, in writing. A managed service that produces no documents is indistinguishable from one that is not running.
Strategic review
A recurring review of where the estate is heading rather than where it is: version currency, architecture, and the decisions that need a budget cycle of notice.
Performance baseline and change list
A measured baseline, then every tuning change recorded with what it altered and what it produced, so an improvement can be proved rather than asserted.
Backup and recovery evidence
Verification that backup jobs completed, and the results of recovery tests, which is the difference between a backup strategy and a backup schedule.
Capacity and growth forecast
Storage, memory, and throughput trends projected forward, so the next constraint appears in a plan rather than in an incident.
Licensing position
Instance, edition, and core inventory reconciled against entitlement, with the over-licensing most estates carry without knowing it.
Why Fortified Data on SQL Server
The platform the firm was built on
SQL Server is where Fortified Data started and it remains the largest part of the practice, which means the failure modes on it are known ones rather than new ones.
Azure and on premises, one team
The same people cover the on-premises instances and the Azure estate, so a hybrid environment gets one architecture opinion instead of an infrastructure team and a cloud team disagreeing.
Licensing treated as part of the platform
Edition, core count, virtualization, and passive failover are design decisions with an invoice attached. They are handled alongside the technical work rather than left to a renewal conversation.
Microsoft cloud platform
Azure SQL and hybrid, run by the same team
A SQL Server estate rarely moves to Azure all at once. It goes in parts, over years, and spends most of that time as a hybrid environment that has to be managed as one thing.
Azure SQL Database
Administration and optimization of the fully managed service: service tier and compute sizing, index and query tuning against the workload, and the configuration that decides whether the monthly cost tracks usage or exceeds it.
Azure SQL Managed Instance
The near-full-compatibility target, and the usual answer for moving an existing application without rewriting it. Fortified Data sizes and configures the instance and handles the compatibility work the move still requires.
Azure database migration
Migration from on-premises SQL Server to Azure with the interruption planned, the data validated row by row, and a way back established before cutover. Run through the phases on the migrations and upgrades page.
Hybrid architecture
Azure Arc for unified management across on premises, cloud, and edge, data synchronization between on-premises and Azure databases, and site recovery planning, so a half-migrated estate is a design rather than a transitional mess.
The Microsoft data platform
Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Factory pipelines, Analysis Services and Reporting Services modernization, and Power BI reading from SQL Server sources, supported alongside the databases underneath them.
Deployment automation
Database changes moved through Azure DevOps pipelines, with infrastructure defined as ARM templates or Bicep, so a schema change is deployed the same way twice and can be rolled back the same way twice.
Common questions about SQL Server services
Which SQL Server versions does Fortified Data support?
Fortified Data supports SQL Server 2012 through 2022 under a managed service, on premises, in Azure, and in AWS. Versions older than that are supported as a migration or upgrade engagement, because an instance past its support date receives no security patches and the correct answer is a path off it rather than indefinite maintenance.
What is the difference between Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance?
Azure SQL Database is a fully managed service best suited to new applications, and Azure SQL Managed Instance provides near full SQL Server compatibility, which is what makes it the usual target for moving an existing application across. Fortified Data decides between them on measured compatibility and cost for the specific workload rather than on a default, and SQL Server on an Azure virtual machine remains the answer where an application needs control of the instance itself.
Can Fortified Data manage SQL Server in Azure and on premises at the same time?
Yes. Hybrid estates are the common case, and Fortified Data manages on-premises instances and Azure SQL together as one environment, including hybrid architecture work such as Azure Arc, data synchronization between on-premises and Azure databases, and site recovery planning.
Can Fortified Data reduce our SQL Server licensing cost?
Frequently, yes. The routes are instance consolidation, right-sizing editions and core counts to what the workload uses, applying Azure Hybrid Benefit where entitlement allows, and correcting virtualization and passive failover assignments. Fortified Data resells no Microsoft licensing, so the recommendation carries no margin, and the SQL Server licensing assessment reconciles the full position where the renewal itself is the question.
Does Fortified Data support Always On availability groups?
Yes. Fortified Data designs, deploys, and manages Always On availability groups and failover cluster instances, including multi-site configurations, and also supports database mirroring and log shipping where those remain in place. The design starts from stated recovery time and recovery point objectives rather than from the feature list.
Can Fortified Data migrate an Oracle database to SQL Server?
Yes. Heterogeneous migrations between engines are run as fixed-scope engagements covering object and data type mapping, stored procedure and code conversion, application compatibility, row-level validation against the source, and a tested rollback path at every phase.
Three ways to work with us
The same SQL Server team, engaged three different ways.
Managed service plans
We run your environment, with 24/7 monitoring, maintenance, and proactive improvement.
On-Call DBA
A guaranteed 15-minute emergency response plus monthly on-demand hours that bank when unused.
Database consulting and projects
Project-based engagements for migrations, performance tuning, data modernization, business intelligence, and high availability and disaster recovery.
Start with the SQL Server estate you actually have
A health check documents performance, availability, security, and licensing across every instance, and produces a prioritized list of what to fix first. Whether Fortified Data then runs the estate is a separate decision.
Let us show you what's possible.