Remote DBA servicesRemote DBA services from senior engineers,
in South Africa and across time zones.
Senior cover for estates without a senior DBA.
- Businesses in the US, UK, Europe, Canada, Australia or New Zealand with SQL Server, Oracle or PostgreSQL in production and nobody senior to own it.
- South African organisations with sites in more than one province, or a data centre, a cloud region and a disaster recovery site that no single resident DBA could cover.
- Software and SaaS companies whose product runs on a database that the development team administers between releases.
- IT leaders replacing a provider that escalates everything, or a contractor who is also the whole platform team.
- Managed service providers who need senior database capability behind their own service without hiring for it.
What a remote DBA actually does for you.
Named engineer, 24/7
- Direct contact, no service desk
- Monthly report of work done and findings
- One fixed retainer, scope in writing
Monitoring and incident response
- Alert thresholds set per estate
- Incidents worked to root cause
- Recurring causes removed, not just restarted
Backups, restores and recovery objectives
- Restore tests scheduled and timed
- Retention aligned to the business
- The gap between backup and recovery made explicit
Patching and version lifecycle
- Patch position tracked per instance
- Test before production, every time
- End-of-support dates planned for, not discovered
Performance, capacity and housekeeping
- Wait, plan and blocking analysis
- Index, statistics and vacuum maintenance
- Growth tracked against real usage
Availability, DR and change windows
- Failover rehearsed on a schedule
- Planned work scheduled in your change windows
- Old system kept until the new one is proven
Access first, then evidence, then a named DBA.
Agreements and access
Your data processing agreement and security schedule are signed before any access exists. Access then runs through your own VPN, bastion host or jump server, with named accounts and multi-factor authentication.
Health check and written scope
A senior DBA assesses the estate through that access: versions, patch position, backups proven by restore, replication, capacity and configuration. The result is a prioritised list and a written scope for ongoing cover.
A named DBA on one retainer
Cover starts under one fixed monthly retainer, quoted in USD, GBP or EUR for international clients and rand-based for South African ones, with response commitments reported against monthly.
Where our day falls in yours.
| Where you are | Difference from SAST | Our 08:00 to 17:00 is your | What that means |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Africa (SAST) | Same time | 08:00 to 17:00 | Full working-day cover; the engineer is in your hours |
| United Kingdom and Ireland (GMT / BST) | 2 hours behind in winter, 1 hour in summer | 06:00 to 15:00 (GMT) or 07:00 to 16:00 (BST) | Most of your working day, from before you start |
| Central Europe (CET / CEST) | 1 hour behind in winter, same time in summer | 07:00 to 16:00 (CET) or 08:00 to 17:00 (CEST) | Your full working day |
| US Eastern (EST / EDT) | 7 hours behind in winter, 6 hours in summer | 01:00 to 10:00 (EST) or 02:00 to 11:00 (EDT) | Your morning overlaps our afternoon; on-call for the rest |
| US Pacific (PST / PDT) | 10 hours behind in winter, 9 hours in summer | 22:00 to 07:00 (PST) or 23:00 to 08:00 (PDT) | Your overnight is our working day, so maintenance windows need no night shift; on-call in your day |
| Australia East (AEST / AEDT) | 8 hours ahead in winter, 9 hours in summer | 16:00 to 01:00 (AEST) or 17:00 to 02:00 (AEDT) | Your afternoon and evening overlap; on-call overnight |
Winter and summer refer to the clock changes in your region; South Africa does not change its clocks.
From first call to named DBA.
Agreements and access
Data processing agreement and security schedule signed; named accounts, multi-factor authentication and the VPN, bastion or jump host path set up and tested; a review by your security team if you want one.
Health check
The estate assessed through that access: versions and patch position, backups proven by restore, replication and failover state, capacity, configuration and the risks nobody had written down.
Scope and retainer
What we take on and what stays with your team written down, with response commitments, reporting and the retainer agreed.
Named DBA on cover
Monitoring and on-call live, the first month's preventative work scheduled, and the engineer who did the health check now the engineer who answers.
Timings are typical rather than a commitment; the scope document carries the dates for your estate.
Inside your environment, under your control.
Remote DBA services for South African businesses.
DBA as a service, not database as a service.
Work we can show.
Questions about remote cover.
Which time zones do you cover?
All of them, in two ways. Our working day is 08:00 to 17:00 South African time (UTC+2), which falls inside the UK and European working day and overlaps the US morning; outside it, production support runs 24/7 on-call under the retainer, and planned work goes into your change windows. The table above shows where our day falls in yours.
How is remote DBA different from managed DBA services?
Remote describes where the engineer sits; managed describes what you are buying. Our remote DBA service is a managed service: preventative work on a schedule, reported monthly, with 24/7 incident cover, not a queue that waits for tickets. South African clients can read the managed model on our DBA services page; international clients get the same model with the retainer quoted in USD, GBP or EUR. DBA services in South Africa
How do you reach our systems, and who can see what you did?
Through your VPN, bastion host or jump server, with a named account per engineer, multi-factor authentication and least-privilege roles for routine work. Elevated rights are used only when needed and logged, sessions are auditable, and you can revoke access at any time. We never ask for exposed database ports or shared logins.
Where does our data go?
Nowhere. We administer the databases where they run, inside your environment, and nothing is copied to ours. We sign your data processing agreement and security schedule before access is granted.
Do you take over from our DBA or work with them?
Whichever the estate needs. Some clients hand the whole database tier over; others keep a DBA or a development team in charge and use us for senior cover, out-of-hours response, patching windows or projects. The split is written into the scope before cover starts.
What does 24/7 mean in practice?
A named engineer is on-call for production incidents around the clock, every day, under response commitments that are written into the scope and reported against each month. It is the same engineer, or the same small group, who did the health check and knows the estate, not a service desk.
Can a South African business use the remote service?
Yes. Most database work is remote wherever the client is, and South African organisations get the same named engineer from our offices in Randpark Ridge, Johannesburg and Stellenbosch, with rand-based fees and site visits for planning, workshops or major changes where they add value.
How do we start, and how long does onboarding take?
Use the form on this page, email expert@radixtrie.com or book a 30-minute call. The first conversation is about your estate, not a sales pitch. A typical onboarding runs about four weeks from agreements and access to a named DBA on cover, as set out above; the dates for your estate go into the scope document.
Talk to a senior DBA.
LaunchLab, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch Outside South African hours, or if you would rather pick a time: book a 30-minute call with Michele or Joseph and they will come prepared.