8 Ways to Reduce the Cost of a SQL Server Estate

Whether in the cloud or a data center, the cost of maintaining a SQL Server estate can escalate quickly. Beyond the direct expenses, indirect costs can quietly unbalance and outpace your IT budget. Let’s look at 8 ways to reduce the costs of your SQL Server estate.

Direct and Indirect Costs of a SQL Server Estate

The costs associated with your SQL Server environment can be divided into two broad categories: direct and indirect costs.

Direct costs

The direct costs associated with a SQL Server estate include:

1. Licensing fees for SQL Server and related software
2. Hardware expenses, including servers and storage
3. Maintenance and support contracts
4. Energy consumption and data center costs
5. Cloud costs associated with VMs, Managed Instances, and Azure SQL Databases or RDS instances

Indirect costs

Indirect costs are harder to quantify but can be just as significant as direct costs. These may include:

1. Database administration and management time
2. Downtime and lost productivity when something goes wrong
3. Security risks and compliance issues
4. Opportunity costs associated with delayed projects and initiatives

A typical scenario

The direct and indirect costs can add up quickly. Here’s a typical scenario.

A company has five SQL Server VMs in Microsoft Azure and two older VMs in a rack in the old server room. Over the past year, performance has deteriorated on two SQL Server VM instances in Azure, so the system administrator who takes care of the SQL Servers added more memory and CPU. The other three SQL instances in Azure seem to be running fine without any perceivable performance issues. The two local SQL instances are primarily used for historical purposes. They are past extended support.

Can we reduce the direct and indirect costs of managing the company’s SQL estate?

Probably.

8 ways to reduce the cost of a SQL Server estate

So, let’s look at ways to reduce the cost of a SQL Server estate. This is not an exhaustive list. But it’s a good starting point as you evaluate your SQL Server environment. These are in no particular order.

1. Server Consolidation

Does the company have the right number of SQL Servers? Could they reduce the number of SQL Servers in their estate through consolidation?

Consolidating multiple SQL Server instances onto fewer, more powerful servers can reduce hardware and licensing costs. It can also reduce the number of SQL Server instances that must be managed, patched, etc.

A SQL Server consolidation effort involves:

• Assessing your current SQL Server utilization for underused resources
• Combining compatible workloads onto shared servers
• Right-sizing servers for the consolidated workloads

Scenario: In this scenario, look at the three VM SQL instances. Perhaps the company can consolidate two VMs into one SQL instance, reducing the number of Azure VMs by one. Perhaps some or all databases can be moved to Azure SQLDBs instead?

2. Right-Size Your Servers

Planning for future growth is good; however, it should be balanced with the cost of supporting your current workload. This is especially true when the SQL Server instances are in the cloud, where compute charges can add up quickly.

Overprovisioning can lead to unnecessary expenses. Ensure your SQL Servers are properly sized for their current workloads.

• Monitor server performance and utilization
• Identify bottlenecks and areas for performance optimization
• Adjust server resources (CPU, memory, storage) accordingly
• Plan for future growth

Scenario: The company can assess the current workload of the VMs. Are they overprovisioned? Can the resources be reduced without affecting performance? Perhaps they can go from 32 cores to 16 on one of the VMs?

3. Choose the Right Licensing Model

SQL Server licensing can be expensive, so it’s important to get it right for your workloads and environment. Select the most cost-effective licensing option for your organization.

• Core-based licensing vs CAL-based for smaller workloads
• Subscription-based models to help with predictable costs
• Enterprise Agreement (EA) for large-scale deployments
• Consider Software Assurance benefits

For more information about SQL licensing, check out Microsoft’s page on SQL Server 2022 pricing and licensing. If you’re uncertain about your licensing options, consider consulting a licensing expert. They may be able to save you some money.

Scenario: If the company is looking to upgrade its SQL environment, other licensing options may be available to reduce its licensing spend.

4. Implement Database Compression

Large databases can be costly. They can consume a lot of storage space. They can also frequently have performance issues.

SQL Server compression can help with both of these. It can lower your hardware costs by reducing storage costs, and improve performance by reducing overall disk I/O.

• Use built-in compression features
• Consider SQL Server columnstore compression

Scenario: Depending on the type and amount of data being stored in the databases, compression could help reduce storage space and improve performance.

5. Monitor and Optimize Performance

Poorly designed queries and inappropriate indexing can lead to more than just unhappy users. They can add direct costs to your SQL Servers estates.

Before adding additional resources to solve your performance issues, look for performance tuning and optimization opportunities. By adding an index, rewriting a query, or adjusting the database schema, you may dramatically improve the response times.

Regular performance monitoring helps identify areas for improvement.

• Use built-in monitoring tools (e.g., SQL Server Management Studio)
• Implement third-party monitoring solutions
• Analyze query performance, indexing, and resource utilization
• Adjust configuration and indexing as needed

Scenario: The system administrator recently added resources to the Azure VM to alleviate performance problems. A performance analysis may identify opportunities to improve performance by tuning some queries, adding indexing, or changing the database schemas. If so, the company could dial back down the resources for the VMs and reduce Azure spending. A SQL Health Check could also reveal that settings such as file growth, MAXDOP, or Cost Threshold for Parallelism aren’t set approximately.

6. Automate Routine Tasks

Regularly maintaining your database is important. Updating statistics, performing and testing backups, applying updates, and other maintenance can and should be scripted and automated when possible. This helps reduce administration time and reduces the likelihood of mistakes.

• Use built-in automation tools (e.g., SQL Server Agent)
• Script routine tasks using PowerShell or T-SQL
• Schedule tasks and monitor execution

Scenario: By reviewing the maintenance jobs, the company may find that statistics are not updated regularly. While looking at scheduled jobs, they should also confirm that backups that support their RTO’s and RPO’s are happening.

7. Consider Cloud Migration

This one is not necessarily a gimme. Not every workload runs better or less expensively in the cloud. But, in some situations, you can experience direct and/or indirect cost savings by moving your workloads to the cloud.

Migrating to cloud-based SQL Server solutions offers scalability and cost savings.

• Assess cloud readiness and compatibility
• Choose a cloud provider (e.g., Azure, AWS)
• Consider managed database services (e.g., Azure SQL Database)
• Plan for data migration and security

By implementing these strategies, organizations can significantly reduce costs, improve efficiency, and drive business growth.

Scenario: To simplify its SQL estate, as well as potentially save costs, the company should consider its on-prem SQL Server instances. Can some of the databases be archived and decommissioned? Can they be moved to Azure?

8. Work with a partner

System administrators and developers are smart and resourceful. However, keeping a SQL Server estate healthy, secure, and reliable requires a specific skill set—one that Database Administrators uniquely develop. Additionally, every hour a system administrator spends maintaining or troubleshooting a SQL Server estate is an hour they have been pulled away from their primary duties, creating an opportunity cost.

• Identify a SQL Server partner who has a deep level of SQL Server expertise at a fraction of the cost of a full-time DBA
• Leverage their DBA Team as a Service to help keep SQL Server healthy, reliable, and secure
• View the partner as an extension of your team

Scenario: In the example, the company can eliminate the split focus of its system administrator, identify and implement cost reduction strategies, and leverage a team of dedicated professional DBAs to manage its SQL Server estate.

Want to learn more?

Want to learn more about how SEROShield helps organizations keep their SQL Servers healthy, reliable, and secure? Let’s talk. Schedule a no-obligation discovery call with us.