Managing databases at scale is a full-time speciality
Most organisations are stretched thin - relying on developers or generalist engineers to manage critical database infrastructure. The result is reactive firefighting, accumulating technical debt, and performance degradation that compounds over time.
A senior DBA hire is a significant salary commitment before benefits, training, and the risk of single-person dependency. VLDB provides a full team of specialists for a predictable monthly fee - with deeper bench depth than any internal hire.
Full-spectrum DBA operations
Every tier covers the full operational lifecycle - from day-to-day health to incident response and long-term architecture.
Expert DBA Coverage
Certified PostgreSQL and Greenplum specialists. No juniors on critical systems.
Proactive Monitoring
Continuous automated monitoring and alerting, scaled to your tier's coverage hours, to catch issues before they become incidents.
Patch & Lifecycle Management
Controlled upgrade paths, version management, and dependency tracking - without the chaos.
Security & Compliance
Hardening, access control, audit logging, and compliance posture - built in from day one.
Performance Tuning
Query optimisation, index strategy, vacuuming, and workload management to keep things fast.
Disaster Recovery
Tested backup strategies, HA configuration, and failover procedures - so you sleep at night.
We manage your data - wherever it lives
Our core speciality is PostgreSQL and Greenplum, with broad coverage across commercial, open-source, and cloud-native databases.
PostgreSQL
Greenplum
Oracle
SQL Server
MySQL
MongoDB
AWS
Azure
Google Cloud
SnowflakeChoose your level of coverage
All tiers include proactive monitoring, regular reporting, and direct access to certified database engineers.
Core DBA coverage for stable, production PostgreSQL environments.
Extended coverage for complex, high-availability environments.
24/7 white-glove DBA operations for regulated or high-stakes environments.
What you gain with VLDB DBAaaS
Better database performance, lower costs, and a team that handles the complexity - so you can focus on what matters.
Significant cost reduction
Eliminate high internal staffing costs - salaries, training, recruitment, and turnover risk. Gain specialist expertise on a predictable monthly budget.
Uptime and stability you can plan around
Proactive monitoring and fast incident response, scaled to your tier's coverage hours, keep critical databases available under normal and peak load.
Freed engineering capacity
When VLDB handles patching, backups, and performance monitoring, your developers get their time back - for product, not infrastructure.
Enhanced security & compliance
Continuous security patching, configuration hardening, and audit support, working alongside your own GDPR and regulatory requirements.
Fully managed in about a week
Our structured onboarding is typically a week of focused work - health assessment, tooling setup, SLA definition, and handover - so you're under expert management fast, with minimal disruption. Timelines vary with the size and complexity of your environment.
Database Health Assessment
We conduct a thorough evaluation of your database environment - performance, security, configuration, and infrastructure posture. You get a clear picture of where you stand before we take over.
Define SLAs & Runbooks
Together we establish transparent SLAs, incident response protocols, and escalation paths. We align with your ITIL processes, ticketing systems, and change management board.
Monitoring & Tooling Setup
We integrate our monitoring stack with your environment - or plug into your preferred tooling. Alerting, dashboards, and baseline metrics are configured before handover.
Managed Operations Begin
Your databases are under full VLDB management. Our engineers become an extension of your team - monitoring, tuning, patching, and supporting your environment within your tier's agreed hours from day one.
Common questions about DBAaaS
What is DBAaaS?
Database Administration as a Service (DBAaaS) is a managed model where a specialist team handles all aspects of your database operations - monitoring, performance tuning, patching, backups, and incident response - for a predictable monthly fee. You get expert DBA coverage without the cost and risk of in-house headcount.
How does DBAaaS benefit my organisation?
You gain access to a team of certified database specialists at a fraction of the cost of hiring. Your databases are monitored within your tier's agreed hours (up to 24/7 on Mission Critical), incidents are caught before they become outages, and your internal engineers are freed from infrastructure firefighting to focus on product and business work.
Why outsource to VLDB instead of hiring in-house?
A senior DBA hire is a significant salary commitment before benefits and training - and you're exposed to single-person risk. VLDB provides a full team of specialists covering multiple technologies for a predictable monthly fee, with no recruitment overhead or single point of failure.
Which databases do you support?
Our core speciality is PostgreSQL and Greenplum, but we also support Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, MongoDB, and major cloud platforms including AWS RDS/Aurora, Azure SQL, and Google Cloud SQL. If you're not sure whether we cover your stack, just ask.
How quickly can you take over our databases?
Our standard onboarding is typically a week of focused work. In that time we conduct a health assessment, define SLAs and runbooks, set up monitoring and tooling, and hand over to full managed operations. Larger or more complex environments can take longer; for urgent situations we can provide interim support sooner.
What does the onboarding week look like in practice?
Day 1–2: database health assessment and environment audit. Day 2–3: SLA definition, runbook creation, and alignment with your change management process. Day 3–4: monitoring stack integration and alerting configuration. Day 5: handover - your databases are under full VLDB management.
Do you support on-premise, cloud, and hybrid environments?
Yes. We manage databases wherever they live - on-premise data centres, private cloud, AWS, Azure, GCP, or hybrid estates. We don't require you to migrate or change infrastructure to work with us.
What does 'proactive monitoring' mean in practice?
We continuously analyse performance metrics, query patterns, resource utilisation, replication lag, and storage trends. We detect and resolve issues - configuration drift, slow queries, tablespace pressure - before they cause incidents, rather than waiting for an alert or user complaint.
Is my data safe with VLDB?
Yes. Our engineers operate under strict access controls, with all activity fully audited. We follow least-privilege principles and work with your compliance requirements, including GDPR. We don't take a copy of your data - we manage access to your existing infrastructure, under terms agreed with you.
Can I customise the service to suit our needs?
Absolutely. All three tiers can be scoped and adjusted. If your environment sits between tiers, or you have specific compliance, on-call, or technology requirements, we'll build a custom arrangement. Contact us and we'll scope it together.
What happens if there's a major incident?
Our response time depends on your tier - 15-minute SLA on Mission Critical, same-business-hour on Enterprise. We follow predefined runbooks agreed during onboarding, escalate through your nominated contacts, and provide a full post-incident report with root cause analysis.
How does pricing work?
Foundation starts from £1,000/month and Enterprise from £3,000/month - both based on the number of managed instances and coverage hours. Mission Critical is priced on scope. There are no hidden charges; your monthly fee covers all DBA operational activity within your tier.
Want DBAaaS bundled with data pipelines, data models and DBAsk, as one managed service? See DBAI Platform.
Let's scope your database requirements
Not sure which tier fits? Talk to a VLDB specialist - we'll assess your environment and recommend the right level of coverage. No commitment, no pressure.