SQL Server “upgraded” (without the hardware cost) using Red9 SQL Managed Services for Leland Management
Challenges
- Unpredictably slow SQL Server
- No proactive care
- Missing best practices
Solution
Benefits
- Stable SQL Server
- Significantly faster SQL processing
- Satisfactory SLAs
- Faster key business processing
- More SQL Server capacity
- Savings in hardware upgrade
- Happy internal and external customers
Background
Leland Management is one of the largest and most well-respected real estate management companies in the state of Florida. In the past 20 years, Leland has grown from a single employee to more than 400 employees managing 400+ communities throughout 14 offices statewide.
In 2019, Leland started experiencing major slowdowns with its third-party property management software. The systems were so slow that it impacted their ability to complete their monthly invoicing on time, as well as other critical business functions. When they approached their software vendor regarding the speed issues, they were told to upgrade their hardware which often comes with a six-figure price tag.
Leland engaged Red9 to validate the advice of their third-party software vendor. After running a thorough evaluation including our proprietary 145 point health check, Red9 determined that the hardware upgrade was not only costly and unnecessary but would not resolve the speed issues. In fact, the issues Leland was experiencing were being caused by the way the queries were written within the third-party software.
Leland had two choices to resolve their issues, build custom software in-house to replace their property management vendor or continue to try to work with what they had.
Ripping and replacing their existing solution would have not only been costly for Leland, but time-consuming. Instead, Leland chose to work with Red9 and joined our managed services program. Every month, Red9 tunes and optimizes Leland’s database to continually make it faster and more stable. As a result, Red9 was able to resolve Leland’s speed issues which allowed them to forgo the expense of the hardware upgrade and/or replacing their existing software.
Problem
Red9 identified multiple SQL Server problems:
- The client received bad guidance from its third-party software vendor due to the vendor’s lack of experience in high-volume SQL Servers.
- Third-party software vendor software was inundated with extremely inefficiently written SQL queries.
- SQL Server was lacking numerous SQL Server best practices, maintenance and monitoring.
Solution
At Red9 we always start with our proprietary 145 point SQL Server Health Check which we used to uncover a variety of technical issues.
- SQL Server Health check analyzed and prioritized all SQL-related issues.
- SQL Server best practices deployed, including security, maintenance, configuration, Windows OS settings, storage configuration changes, how databases and files were spread across disks, and more.
- Deployed SQL Server monitoring and alerting to catch problems proactively.
- Worked with the third-party software vendor to identify how to best work together. We came up with an innovative way to deploy SQL performance tuning changes safely without interfering with the third-party software vendor and their patching process without voiding software support.
- Red9 has been continuously tracking down worst-performing queries and performance tuning them. Slow queries being identified using two methods: 1. Leland identified a screen of the software which was slow and Red9 then identified which SQL statements were invoked. 2. Red9 identified the slowest SQL statements client ran over the last 14 or 30 days, aggregated, and made SQL performance improvements.
Results
- The six-figure SQL Server hardware upgrade project was deemed unnecessary and postponed indefinitely. Mostly because SQL performance tuning achieved necessary performance metrics.
- Higher SQL Server capacity and speed
- Since the start of engagement about 75 slow queries have been performance tuned
- Average query run duration was decreased: 9x times
- Average storage cycle consumption was decreased by 146x times
- Average CPU processing time necessary reduced by 83x times
- Reduced complaints – internal employees and external customers are no longer complaining about how slow software works, increasing satisfaction in clients’ services.
Testimonials
The deep level of knowledge of MSSQL is incredible and the combined experience and expertise has been a huge asset. Additionally, the flexibility and professionalism throughout a difficult migration was highly appreciated.
With little notice Red9 was able to find and fix a number of different SQL misconfigurations and wasteful practices as our customer moved their SQL environment from a rack solution with Fiber SAN to the Azure cloud.
Red9’s cool confidence and eagerness to deliver results are surpassed only by their deep penetrating knowledge of SQL. Whether it's SQL design, development, optimization, or recovery, Red9 is a SQL Gem.
They have mastered the understanding of complex, heavy load TSQL transactions. If you would like to sleep better at night and know your database will be running well in the morning, then I would recommend finding a DBA company with the kind of skill set Red9 has proven time and time again.
