SQL Server Health Check – Comprehensive Performance & Stability Assessment

The SQL Server Health Check is a specialised professional service designed to help customers get started with or extend their use of Microsoft Azure. This assessment evaluates the health, performance, security and cloud readiness of your SQL Server environment—whether running on-premises, in virtual machines, or already hosted in Azure SQL Managed Instance, Azure SQL Database or SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines.

Delivered by senior consultants specialised in the Microsoft Data Platform, this engagement identifies critical issues, performance bottlenecks and misconfigurations, while also providing concrete recommendations to optimise or modernise workloads in Azure.

Server Configuration Review

• Memory, CPU and critical configuration parameters.
• Validation of MaxDOP, Cost Threshold and server-level settings aligned with Azure best practices.
• Review of versions, patching and trace flags to ensure cloud readiness.

Performance & Stability

• Analysis of wait stats and root causes of performance issues.
• Review of blocking, tempdb usage, connections and workload behaviour.
• Assessment of disk latency and resource consumption, including Azure storage considerations.

Database State Review

• Growth and size analysis of databases and files.
• Log file structure, VLF analysis and recovery behaviour.
• Index fragmentation and maintenance strategy with recommendations for Azure optimisation.

Query & Index Analysis

• Identification of slow-running queries and critical procedures.
• Detection of duplicated, unused or missing indexes.
• Review of statistics and compression opportunities to reduce Azure compute/storage usage.

Security & Best Practices

• Permissions and role structure review.
• Status of encryption, auditing and backup configuration.
• Identification of vulnerabilities and exposure risks, including alignment with Azure security features.

Backup & Recovery

• Validation of backup frequency and retention policies.
• Verification of the full recovery chain.
• Evaluation of RTO and RPO with recommendations to leverage Azure Backup or migration to Azure SQL.

Final Report & Azure Readiness Roadmap

• Full technical findings report.
• Prioritised action plan based on criticality and impact.
• Cloud readiness analysis and recommendations for migration or optimisation in Microsoft Azure.
• Review meeting with senior consultant guidance for next steps in your Azure journey.