The Challenge
Petvisor offers mobile technologies for pet care professionals, serving thousands vet clinics, hundreds of grooming facilities, and several pet owners. This scale creates complex data infrastructure needs.
As Petvisor readied its non-production databases for migration from SQL Server 2014 Enterprise Edition on AWS RDS, it confronted a typical dilemma: migrate as-is or optimize first? Without assessment, they risked carrying over inefficiencies and hidden bottlenecks—issues costlier to fix after migration.
Engaging dbSeer for a strategic assessment helped Petvisor lay a solid foundation, ensuring their migration would optimize costs, performance, and future scalability.
The dbSeer Approach: Assessment Before Implementation
Rather than rushing into migration, dbSeer implemented its assessment-first methodology to understand Petvisor’s current state and identify opportunities for optimization. This approach works across database engines—whether you’re running PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, or other platforms—because the principles of thorough assessment remain constant.
For Petvisor’s SQL Server environment, the team deployed industry-standard diagnostic tools and custom scripts to assess database health, identify best practices, and pinpoint potential areas of concern.
This analysis examined the SQL Server instance, reviewing patch levels, parallelism, and utilization patterns.
Key Findings and Impact
The assessment revealed critical insights that would have become expensive problems post-migration. First, the analysis revealed dozens of abandoned databases still sitting in the environment—relics from discontinued projects that were marked for deletion but never removed. Without this discovery, Petvisor would have had to pay to migrate, store, and maintain databases that nobody was using.
They also identified configurations suitable for EC2, but problematic in RDS. Query parallelism requires adjustment—issues that are expensive to fix post-migration but can be prevented with proper assessment.
The assessment revealed right-sizing opportunities. By comparing usage to server specifications, dbSeer identified areas where costs could be reduced. Running SQL Server 2014, Petvisor can choose to patch before migrating or upgrade directly to later versions. These insights provided a clear action plan.
The Results: Laying the Groundwork for Success
The assessment provided Petvisor with a clear roadmap, enabling a confident migration. dbSeer eliminated deprecated databases (cutting complexity and cost), documented configuration changes for RDS, and offered right-sizing recommendations.
The result: a prioritized plan focused on business-critical databases, streamlining optimization.
With this foundation, Petvisor’s optimization and migration proceeded smoothly, eliminating the need for trial and error. dbSeer’s assessment became the blueprint guiding all later steps.
Why Foundation Matters for Startups
For growing companies with complex infrastructure, the right roadmap is crucial. Many rush optimization or migration without a full understanding, leading to rework, higher costs, and performance problems.
dbSeer’s assessment-first method establishes a strategic foundation for execution across PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, and other platforms. We help deliver insights that turn uncertainty into action, whether working with internal teams, partners, or on your next growth phase.
Ready to optimize your databases? dbSeer is on AWS Marketplace. Contact us to see how our assessment-first approach builds a solid foundation for AWS modernization.
