Find problems before they become business problems.
Your SQL Server sits at the heart of the business. When it slows down, goes offline or loses data, the impact is immediate and expensive.
A health check is an independent review of the whole environment: what’s at risk, what’s slowing it down, and — the one most people have never tested — whether your backups would actually restore.
£495 fixed price
- Independent assessment, no obligation
- Written report with a prioritised action plan
- Remote review included
- Backups verified by restoring them, not by reading a log
Is this you?
A health check earns its money if any of these apply:
- Your SQL Server has never had a formal review
- Performance has become unpredictable
- You’re not certain the backups are good
- The system is business critical and nobody’s checked it in years
- You’re planning an upgrade or a migration
- You’ve inherited it and don’t know what state it’s in
- Someone has asked you to evidence your disaster recovery arrangements and you’d rather check first
Backups: we restore them
[IMG-1] — Lead image. A restore verification log: database, backup date, restore time, integrity check result. Redacted. This is the proof the whole page turns on.
Alt: SQL Server backup restore verification
Most businesses assume their backups work because the job shows green. A job that completes and a backup that restores are two different things, and the gap between them is where companies get destroyed.
We restore customer backups as a matter of routine, because a backup is only worth anything if it can actually be recovered.
- Backup jobs running, and running on everything — including the databases added since the plan was written
- Backups that restore, tested rather than assumed
- Integrity verified, so you’re not backing up corruption night after night
- Retention appropriate to what you’d actually need to go back to
- Recovery procedures documented, not in one person’s head
- Off-site and offline copies — ransomware goes looking for the backup server first
What else we review
We work through a comprehensive list of checks built up over many years of running clients’ SQL Server systems.
Database health
Integrity checks, error and maintenance logs, transaction log growth, index fragmentation, capacity and disk space, and configuration left at default since installation.
Performance tuning
Long-running queries, missing and unused indexes, blocking and locking, resource bottlenecks, and the settings that quietly cost you 20–30%. Plus hardware, server and network configuration. You get the specific findings, not a generic list →SQL Server performance tuning
Security audit
That the server is properly secured and your customers’ data is protected, with every exposure and risk documented. User accounts and permissions — including the ones belonging to people who left. Server and database configuration, encryption, sa accounts, service account privileges, and whether anything is being audited at all.
Troubleshooting
Errors, common problems and the mistakes that get made repeatedly — the things throwing entries into your logs every night that nobody has looked at.
Disaster recovery
If the server failed tomorrow, how long until you’re working again, and how much data would you lose? We evaluate, test and document current readiness, and update the DR plan.
Most people have never been given those two numbers for their own system. You’ll leave with both.
Want to have a look yourself first?
Fair enough. sp_Blitz is free, it’s excellent, and it’ll give you a list of everything wrong with your SQL Server in about thirty seconds. We use it ourselves.
What it won’t do is tell you which of those findings actually matter for your business, what fixing each one is worth against what it costs, or whether your backups restore — because no script can restore a backup and check the data’s all there.
So run it. If the output is short and you understand it, you probably don’t need us. If it’s four hundred lines and you don’t know where to start, that’s the conversation to have.
What you receive
[IMG-2] — Right-aligned. A page of the actual report — the prioritised action plan, RAG-rated. Redacted. Nobody buys a fixed-price report sight unseen without wanting to see what arrives.
Alt: SQL Server health check report and action plan
Executive summary — plain English, for whoever signs things off
Technical report — full findings for your IT team, support partner or DBA
Prioritised action plan, sorted by what actually matters:
| Priority | What it means |
|---|---|
| Critical | Fix now. Usually a backup that wouldn’t restore, or corruption |
| High priority | Real risk, but you’re not on fire today |
| Recommended | Worth doing, cost-justified, not urgent |
| Ongoing maintenance | The things that should be happening routinely and aren’t |
The report is yours. You’re free to do nothing with it, act on it in-house, or hand it to another supplier.
Why CDE Systems
Over 25 years supporting and developing SQL Server databases, across manufacturing, healthcare, distribution, engineering, consultancy and professional services.
Our health check has evolved out of hundreds of real installations, so it looks for the things that cause real problems rather than producing a generic automated report: failed backups, undetected corruption, maintenance nobody set up, security weaknesses, performance bottlenecks, and recovery procedures that have never been tried.
It’s explained in plain English, because the person who approves the fix usually isn’t the person who reads the error log.
And unlike most people offering reviews, we carry on supporting systems afterwards — which keeps the recommendations realistic, since we’re the ones who’d have to implement them.
Not sure you need one?
Thirty minutes on the phone, free. We’ll go through what you’re running, what’s worrying you, and whether a health check would tell you anything you don’t already know.
If it wouldn’t, we’ll say so.
☎ · contact us
What usually happens next
Nothing. The system’s in good shape and needs minor housekeeping. We’ll tell you that.
Ongoing support. Fit for purpose, benefits from expert maintenance → SQL Server support and consultancy
Performance work. Specific and scoped against findings rather than guesswork → SQL Server performance tuning
Upgrade or migration. Especially if you’re on a version that’s out of support →SQL Server migration and upgrades
Case Studies
Aire Valley Catering: four mobile apps, an Access business system, and engineers with no signal
Engineers working on customer sites across the UK can't count on having a signal, and the job still has to be recorded. Four production apps across both app stores, an Access and SQL Server business system behind them, and a roadmap that keeps offline working rather than trading it away.
View case study →Recovering audit and customer data across multiple corrupt SQL databases
Several customer databases became damaged and wouldn't open, putting audit records, operational data and customer information at risk of permanent loss. A structured recovery programme rebuilt usable datasets from the corrupt files and returned multiple customer systems to service.
View case study →ACC Worldwide: a faster SQL Server platform, noticed on day one
A business-critical system was working but slow, and staff felt it every day. Work on the SQL Server environment behind it delivered an immediate speed increase, and left ACC's own IT team with the logging and monitoring tools to keep developing it.
View case study →BLOCK 10 — [CASE-STUDIES]
| Card | Why it belongs here | Links to |
|---|---|---|
| ACC | Your sheet tags it to SQL health check as well as tuning. Lead card. | /case-studies/acc/ |
| Anonymous (crisis) | Recovery under pressure — the argument for doing this before rather than after. Anonymity suits it. | /case-studies/sql-crisis/ (confirm slug) |
Book a SQL Server Health Check
Independent review, written report, prioritised actions — and your backups tested by restoring them. If you'd rather talk first, we'll give you 30 minutes free to work out whether it's worth doing.
Request a health check → Call 0114 249 1036 →