Tired of SQL Server performance issues and unexpected downtime? Red9 pairs your St. Louis team with senior DBAs to keep your SQL Server fast and online 24/7. Only senior DBAs with 15+ years of experience. No juniors. SQL Server is all we do.
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SQL Server consulting in St. Louis: the short answer
Red9 delivers senior-only SQL Server consulting, performance tuning, managed DBA services, and emergency response to organizations across the St. Louis region, taking in Clayton, Chesterfield, Kirkwood, St. Charles, and the Metro East. This engine is the only one we have worked on since the firm started in 2014. Nothing gets quoted until the free 145-point health check is back. Our client base runs past 120, from seed-stage startups up to the Fortune 100; Managed Services and Emergency Services clients have production incidents answered inside 15 minutes, and every change ships with the readings taken around it.
Need a SQL Server consultant who can work inside your change process in St. Louis? Book your free assessment.
St. Louis runs on rail interchanges, hospital systems, brokerage back offices, plant-science labs, and defense manufacturing. Their databases are often older than the teams maintaining them, where careful measurement beats a bigger server.
BJC, Mercy, SSM Health, and the Washington University medical campus anchor a large care sector, with the Cortex district and Danforth Center adding a plant-science layer. Clinical and research data sits under HIPAA and retention rules that keep most of it in place, so growth management matters as much as tuning.
A very large retail brokerage and several investment banks run operations from this metro, with account, transaction, and settlement data on SQL Server. Overnight windows are fixed and the numbers must reconcile by morning. Change control is strict, so we prove the fix on a restored copy. See the payments case below.
Six Class I railroads meet here and barge traffic runs the Mississippi, making St. Louis one of the country's busiest interchange points. Tracking, yard, and inventory feeds arrive continuously. We keep the ingest path clear of the reporting path so neither waits on the other.
Defense aerospace, a broad supplier network, and long-established food and beverage manufacturing keep ERP, quality, and production data in SQL Server. These estates carry a decade of custom procedures, and reading them is the first job.
We work with organizations across the region: St. Louis, Clayton, Chesterfield, Kirkwood, St. Charles, Belleville, and Edwardsville, out to O'Fallon, Columbia, and Springfield, and throughout Missouri and Southern Illinois, all over secure remote access. Work is scheduled around your change windows on Central time.
Principal-grade input for a St. Louis team deciding on architecture, licensing, or how much life the current design has left. Worth having before the commitment rather than during the recovery.
From $4,995 / 20-hr block (hours do not expire)Senior administrators operating the estate: monitoring, patching, verified restores, capacity planning. The discipline gets covered without a job requisition.
From $395 / moWhen production stops, the engineer on the other end has already worked this failure mode, with a 15-minute response for Managed Services and Emergency Services clients.
From $2,500 / incidentStatements ranked by what they cost per day, the worst rebuilt, and every reading logged either side. Where logic is the limit rather than indexing, we say so in writing.
Version upgrades, Azure SQL, and AWS RDS moves, sequenced so nobody downstream notices the switch. Extended support for SQL Server 2016 ended July 14, 2026, and 2017 goes in October 2027, which is close enough to plan for today.
A free, read-only pass over 145 points spanning configuration, backups, security, and performance, returned as a fix list ordered by value. The same audit is available for you to run yourself.
Failover with a rehearsal behind it and a measured recovery time on paper. We design and tune clusters and Always On Availability Groups, then add log shipping, replication, or Change Data Capture (CDC) where only the changed rows need to travel.
Preparation on the databases your team wants to point an assistant at, ChatGPT (OpenAI) or Claude (Anthropic), together with the RAG pipelines, vector search, and analytical traffic those tools drive into SQL Server. When reporting starts to squeeze production, we move the offload, SSRS and Power BI datasets included, onto Snowflake, Redshift, or whichever warehouse you already own.
"These folks are MS SQL Server experts! They took on management of five of our servers -- quickly assessing their current state, recommending (and then implementing) a holistic range of best-practices, and continuing on to provide proactive monitoring and ongoing optimizations."
"HUGE improvement on the user side when running the process! Our problematic query went from ~45 seconds to ~5!"
"Mark is a great SQL resource."
Four steps, and the senior DBA who audits your estate is the one who then changes it. You see the roadmap and its expected return before you approve anything.
Which instances the business cannot lose, what actually breaks, and how your change process works. That last one shapes the sequence more than people expect.
A read-only pass across 145 checks covering configuration, restorable backups, exposed security, and query performance, with every finding ordered by what fixing it returns. You are welcome to run the same audit on your own instance first, at no cost, through our self-serve Health Check.
One session through the report, in priority order, with hours and cost against each line. You leave holding a plan and a firm figure.
Once approved, we work the plan and record readings around each change, so every gain is a number rather than a claim. Managed services afterwards hold the estate steady.
Three real Red9 projects, followed from the opening review to the final measurement. Every figure below was recorded by the client, before and after. Names stay private on their instruction.
The problem. A commercial textile rental company had two availability procedures dominating its rental management database. The first ran about 1,300 times a day and consumed roughly three hours of SQL time; the second ran about 1,500 times a day for another hour. Both were reading hundreds of thousands of pages per call.
What we did. We created indexes across the order-header, order-return, tracking, label, and item-master tables, then measured again. The gains were real but bounded, so the report went further: it specified replacing table variables with temp tables and restructuring a join that was multiplying rows, with the reasoning for each recommendation.
Temp tables in place of table variables, and a join reworked to stop multiplying rows.
The result. Both procedures got measurably faster, roughly 33 minutes of daily SQL processing came back from the first one alone, and the client finished with a written, ordered account of what indexing could not reach and why. That is a more useful deliverable than a claim of a fix that never landed.
What the review found. Index gaps explained part of the cost. The rest sat in the procedure logic: table variables the optimizer could not estimate, and a join condition producing a Cartesian product that no index can undo.
What we changed (identifiers generalized for privacy):
-- Availability procs: ~1,300/day at 8 s and ~1,500/day at 3 s, reads in the hundreds of thousands. CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_red9_order_header_pickup ON dbo.[order_header] (pickupDate, orderNumber) INCLUDE (statusCode); -- further indexes added on order-return, tracking, label and item-master paths -- recommended (client-side dev work): temp tables replacing table variables; -- join predicate corrected to remove the Cartesian product
Splitting a result into what we fixed and what the application still owes is the honest way to report a workload like this one.
The problem. A supply-chain software company had an export procedure scanning a staging table about 9,000 times a day. Each call averaged 253 ms, burned 359 ms of CPU, and read 40,279 pages, all to find the rows that had yet to be exported. The flag it filtered on had no index.
What we did. We created one nonclustered index on that single flag column and measured the same procedure again from the client's before-and-after comparison report.
Across roughly 9,000 executions a day, from one index.
The result. The export procedure returns in 3 ms and reads three pages instead of 40,279. Roughly 37.5 minutes of daily SQL processing came back, and the CPU that had been going into repeated scans went with it. One index, one rollback script.
What the review found. The procedure filtered on an exported flag with no index behind it, so every call scanned the whole staging table to find a handful of unexported rows. The CPU figure exceeded the duration figure because the plan went parallel to cope with the scan.
What we changed (identifiers generalized for privacy):
-- Export proc: ~9,000 calls/day, 253 ms each, 40,279 reads, 359 ms CPU. CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_red9_export_staging_flag ON dbo.[export_staging] (exported); -- metrics taken verbatim from the client's before/after comparison report -- rollback: DROP INDEX IX_red9_export_staging_flag provided
A one-column index on a selective flag is the cheapest fix in this business, and at 9,000 calls a day it is also one of the most valuable.
The problem. A banking and fintech provider ran a returns and routing query about 40 times a day, and each run averaged 339 seconds. That amounted to roughly four hours of SQL time daily and 8,514,892 logical reads, on a table the query had no useful index against.
What we did. Because the estate sits under tight change control, we worked on a copy restored from production, drove it with parameters matched to the real workload, and built a covering nonclustered index across the four columns the query filters, with a wide include list for the columns it returns. The DROP INDEX rollback went out with the script.
From roughly 40 runs a day of a single query.
The result. The query returns in 10 seconds instead of nearly six minutes and reads about a tenth of what it did, freeing roughly four hours of daily SQL time. The client held the script and the rollback and applied both on its own release schedule.
What the review found. The query inserted into a temporary table from a wide returns table, filtering on four columns with no index between them, so every one of its 40 daily runs scanned millions of pages.
What we changed (identifiers generalized for privacy):
-- Returns query: ~40 runs/day at 339 s, 8,514,892 reads. Validated on a restored copy. CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_red9_returns_route_include ON dbo.[returns_detail] (returnCode, entityCode, routingId, recordDate) INCLUDE (amount, accountRef, statusCode); -- before/after captured with Query Store on the restored copy -- rollback: DROP INDEX IX_red9_returns_route_include provided
Four filter columns in the key and the returned columns in the include list is what turned a multi-million-page scan into a seek.
Every figure above was measured on somebody else's estate. 30 minutes on yours and we will show you what is hiding in it.
Get a Free SQL Server Assessment ➜Rather talk it through? A senior DBA answers at 1-877-891-1870.
Principal-grade specialists handle the engagement themselves. There is no junior tier practicing on your production instance.
Every engagement since 2014 has been a SQL Server engagement, across 10,000+ databases audited and thousands of servers.
Readings on both sides of every change, and a written account of anything indexing alone could not reach.
Managed Services and Emergency Services clients reach a senior DBA inside 15 minutes at any hour of the year.
Yes. Essentially all of our clients operate this way, over secure remote access. A senior DBA stays reachable through your full St. Louis workday on Central time, with 24/7/365 emergency cover on top of that for Managed Services and Emergency Services clients. The access is yours to control: we connect over your VPN or bastion host using least-privilege logins you create and can revoke immediately, with further controls above that, and each change arrives as a script your team reads and applies on your release schedule.
A straight comparison for the week a St. Louis production database starts missing its overnight window.
| Red9 | In-house DBA hire | Generalist IT / MSP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seniority | Principal-grade SQL Server specialists at 15+ years average, with no junior tier below them. | One hire carries the discipline, and their notice period is your risk. | Broad IT coverage, with SQL Server slotted in around the rest. |
| SQL Server focus | SQL Server is all we do. | Shared with networks, storage, and everything else on the list. | One name on a long capability sheet. |
| Emergency response | Any hour of the year, with a 15-minute response for Managed Services and Emergency Services clients. | Whatever one person can hold while awake. | A queue that runs into hours. |
| Proof | Before-and-after readings, plus an honest note where the limit is application code. | Seldom recorded in a reviewable form. | Usually asserted, rarely measured. |
| Cost model | Per project, per month, or per incident, with no payroll attached. | A loaded St. Louis salary of roughly $115,000 to $140,000, plus benefits and quiet weeks. | Folded into a wider invoice where the database line cannot be seen. |
| Ramp-up | Working on the estate inside days. | Months of search, then months of ramp. | Slow off the mark, and the story restarts each ticket. |
You can have senior SQL Server cover before the next release window. Get a Free SQL Server Assessment ➜
Founder & Partner
25+ years making SQL Servers faster.
Chief Operating Officer
Chief Revenue Officer
Beneath that leadership is a senior-only DBA bench averaging 15+ years, and one named lead stays accountable for your result.
We support St. Louis-area teams over secure remote access, from downtown and the Central West End through Clayton and Chesterfield, up to St. Charles, and across into the Metro East. The same senior DBA answers whether the instance sits in a Kirkwood office or an Edwardsville distribution center.
Coverage reaches across the metro, the Metro East, and the rest of Missouri. Explore the areas we serve.
Five checks worth running on any shortlist.
Ask what share of their engagements are SQL Server. Depth on one engine is what finds the unusual failure.
Establish the name and the years of the person holding your connection, and whether that changes mid-engagement.
If your change process needs proof before production, ask whether they will restore a copy and measure there.
Response time and eligibility, in the contract, with no interpretation required.
Look for a consultant who reports a partial win as a partial win. That habit tells you more than the big multiples do.
| Headquarters | Alpharetta, GA (Atlanta metro) |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2014 |
| Focus | Microsoft SQL Server only |
| Team | Senior-only DBAs, 15+ years average experience |
| Clients | 120+, from startups to the Fortune 100 |
| Databases audited | 10,000+ |
| Rating | 4.9 out of 5, 120+ reviews |
| Emergency response | 15 minutes, 24/7/365, for Managed Services and Emergency Services clients |
| Engagement models | Scoped project, monthly retainer, or per-incident |
| Service area | St. Louis and the wider metro, plus nationwide via secure remote access |
Yes. Red9 covers St. Louis and both sides of the river, from downtown and the Central West End out through Clayton and Chesterfield, north to St. Charles, and east into Belleville and Edwardsville, with a senior SQL Server consultant on every account. Remote delivery is standard in this market and it is what the overwhelming majority of our clients use. Secure remote access and a 15-minute emergency response for Managed Services and Emergency Services clients get a senior DBA working before a site visit could even be scheduled.
15 minutes, any hour, any day of the year, and a senior DBA answers instead of a ticket queue. This response-time SLA is available to current Managed Services clients and Emergency Services clients. See Emergency Services ➜
The 145-point health check is free and there is nothing to sign for it. Managed services and remote DBA run from $395/mo. A 20-hour senior block is $4,995 and the hours do not expire. Emergency response is priced per incident from $2,500. Set that against a loaded St. Louis DBA salary of $115,000 to $140,000, the figure in the comparison table above, and a senior block costs about two weeks of that hire while producing inside the first. Anything larger is quoted after the audit.
Freight systems here interchange constantly, so the database is usually taking a feed and answering a question at the same moment. We keep the ingest path clear of the reporting path, index the status and tracking lookups that fire on every screen refresh, and make sure the nightly work finishes before the first shift needs the tables. Where a feed writes faster than the reports can read, Change Data Capture or replication moves only the rows that changed.
Yes, and on a slow-moving or heavily regulated estate that is often the right sequence. We restore a copy, drive it with parameters matched to production, measure the change there, and hand over the script with its rollback so your team applies it on your schedule. In case #3 above, a payments returns query validated that way came down from 339 seconds to 10, with reads falling from 8.51 million to 816,666.
Then we say so and show you the rest of the road. Some procedures are limited by their own logic, and no index will fix a join that multiplies rows or a table variable the optimizer cannot estimate. In case #1 above, indexes took two availability procedures from eight seconds to six and from three to two, and the report went on to specify the code changes needed for the remaining ground, with the reasoning attached.
Yes. Nonprofits and government agencies get the same free 145-point health check as everybody else, and the result is a ranked finding list with pricing beside it, written so a board or a finance committee can approve or defer each line. Managed services and remote DBA run from $395/mo. A 20-hour senior block is $4,995 and the hours do not expire.
Version support, platform choices, and how our engagements are run are all described on our SQL Server consulting page.
30 minutes is all it takes. We will show you where the estate is losing speed, uptime, and money, and price the work to close each gap. The free SQL Server assessment gives you the findings and the number before anything is agreed.
Schedule My Call Now ➜Rather talk it through? A senior DBA answers at 1-877-891-1870.
