Rob is a SQL Server DBA, Devops engineer and PowerShell guru.

Rob was also recognised a Microsoft Cloud and Datacenter MVP this year.

Rob works with clients to enable automation, SQL Server best practices and Continuous Delivery using PowerShell, Git, VSTS, Jenkins, Octopus Deploy mainly on the Microsoft Azure platform or on-premises. Rob also enables automation of SQL Server database tasks. He also provides customised training in one-on-one or group sessions either online or at your premises by the hour or by the day. You can read more about his career below

You can contact Rob using the form below

Contact

You can contact Rob using the form below. Rob lives in the UK so will aim to reply within 3 hours during daylight GMT except when travelling or on-site with a client.

Removed – due to constant automated emails – please contact me via LinkedIn

 

CV

Feedback from Training

I attended your class Tuesday.  Got a great deal out of it, lots of good info about engineering better shareable PS and easy ways to document it properly!
P – USA

Consultant Sewells Consulting Ltd – Current

Director of own company providing SQL DBA, Training and PowerShell Automation services to public and private sector clients of all sizes.

Large project to automate the creation and refresh of SQL Server environments with PowerShell using Virtual Machine Manager for an Airline and Holiday Firm

Provided Project SQL DBA, PowerShell, training and mentoring services to public sector client including migration of cloud hosted web services, PowerShell Desired State Configuration of UAT and Live environments and Azure Automation. Delivered PoC SQL on Linux solution. Installed and configured Sentry One tools for monitoring

Automated the install and monitoring of Ola Hallengrens Maintenance Solution across large estate as part of a project to use a new backup solution.

Designed, delivered and documented solution to keep SQL updates up to date using SCCM and PowerShell

Provided custom PowerShell training for small teams and individuals

Health check of SQL Server Estate, Remote DBA support, advice on rationalisation and assistance with recruitment for mid sized private sector legal services client

General IT and SQL DBA PowerShell cloud support for small companies

Project SQL DBA, PowerShell, Azure services and incident response  for specialist international body

Senior Technical Consultant DLM Consultants – Current

Enabling global customers with Database Lifecycle Management to ensure that the database is not the bottleneck to successful delivery.

Worked with global customers to deploy databases and SSIS projects at a click of a button using Redgate tooling, VSTS, Git, Octopus Deploy and custom PowerShell scripting

Senior SQL Server DBA Teleperformance Apr 2015 – Nov 2015

Senior SQL Server DBA responsible for a large, geographically diverse, corporate estate comprising of SQL Server 2000 to SQL 2014 including PCI compliant environments. Team Lead for team of 3 DBAs and 2 Data Warehouse technicians. Responsible for the organisations SQL infrastructure, security, performance, availability, redundancy, disaster recovery, and specific application requirements.

Developed and implemented automated solution for the installation of standard DBA scripts including

  • Customised Ola Hallengren maintenance solution ensuring best practice integrity, index maintenance and backups solution
  • Scripts from Brent Ozar and Adam Mechanic for trouble shooting,
  • Alerts for severe errors
  • Extended event sessions

Developed and implemented automated solution using PowerShell, Power Bi and TSQL to provide quick and simple self-service reporting for database information for all teams including Agent Job results, Client database location and security policy reporting
Instigated and took part in in-house hackathon to demonstrate security improvements
Introduced TFS to the DBA team to enable source control of databases and DBA scripts
Automated installation of SQL instances to required company standards
Instrumental member of team to instigate Continuous Delivery and Agile Development to project teams
Ensured resolution of all incidents and request within SLA by the DBA team improving performance to 100%
Assisted with the design and implementation of a corporate data warehouse solution
Implemented, maintained and provided reporting for security and resilience to comply with required corporate policies
Lead member of project team to upgrade systems from SQL 2000, 2005, Windows 2003 to SQL 2014, Windows Server 2012R2 including availability groups for HA/DR and TDE for security of data at rest and rationalisation of the number of instances

 

SQL DBA Public Sector Oct 2011 – Apr 2015

Supporting a large environment of SQL, Ingres and Oracle Databases for the creation, verification and deployment of maritime charts, ensuring availability and improving performance. The estate consists of SQL 2000, 2005, 2008 R2 and 2012 instances, Oracle 10g and 11g and Ingres versions 6 and 9.2 running on Windows server 2000,2003 and 2008 R2 and UNIX

Developed, improved and automated routine administration tasks, alerting, maintenance, capacity planning and performance tuning of SQL Server instances using custom written Powershell scripts, Policy Based Management,System Center, Operations Manager, Red Gates SQL Monitor

Improved teams productivity by developing and maintaining a series of Powershell scripts to automate as many routine tasks as possible

Influential in introducing Powershell into IT administration not only in the DBA team but also providing frequent training, support, feedback, code reviews and documentation for all 3rd line teams

Implemented and maintained security and resilience in accordance with Microsoft best practices and MoD requirements and ensure documentation is kept up to date.

Provide 3rd line technical support, investigation, diagnosis of incidents and resolution within agreed SLAs and provide 24/7 365 on-call support for critical systems.

Active member of project teams to deliver new solutions and upgrades to existing solutions. Worked with other technical teams to enable them to work towards Agile delivery providing solutions to custom environment specific issues

Central critical resource for Azure IaaS project including Powershell scripting to install entire environment and provide DR as well as implementing SQL mirroring. Provided input from design to delivery to supportability, writing custom Powershell scripts for creation of support environment, for monitoring servers and systems, using Azure Automation to improve 1st line fixes and to reduce complexity of update routines

Speaking

I am proud to be a part of the #SQLCommunity and #SQLFamily as well as the PowerShell Community and lucky enough to be selected to speak at SQL and PowerShell Events. You can find links to the presentations, demos and webinars

2017

December 9th SQL Saturday Slovenia

November 10th SQL Glasgow

October 31st SQL PASS Summit (proctor)

October 28th PSConf Asia

October 27th PSConf Asia

October 26th PSConf Asia Pre-Con

October 24th Devops Singapore

October 13th SQL relay Bristol

October 12th SQL Relay Birmingham

October 11th SQL Relay Leeds

October 10th SQL Relay Nottingham

October 9th SQL Relay Reading

October 2nd DataMinds Connect 2017

September 30th SQL Saturday Holland

September 25th SQL South West

September 22nd PSDay.UK

September 21st Southampton Dev User Group

September 18th South Coast PowerShell User Group

September 16 PowerShell Saturday Stuttgart

August 24th Wellington SQL User Group New Zealand

July 24th SQL South West

Administrating SQL Server with PowerShell dbatools

July 15th SQL Saturday Manchester

Administrating SQL Server with PowerShell dbatools

Teaching the IT Pro how to Dev – PowerShell, Source Control & Unit Testing

June 9th – GroupBy

Green is Good – Red is Bad – Turning Your Checklists into Pester Tests

Video

June 2nd SQL Grillen – Lingen

Green is good, Red is bad – Turning your Checklists into Pester Tests

May 23rd Techorama – Antwerp

PowerShell SQL Server: Modern Database Administration with dbatools and dbareports

May 20th TUGAIT – Lisbon

Introduction to Pester – TDD for PowerShell

dbatools open source project – SQL Server and PowerShell together

PowerShell Conference Europe – Hannover

May 4th

Creating and Maintaining Successful Open Source Projects

Video

Green is bad Red is Good – Turning your Checklists into Pester Tests

Video

May 5th

Using the SQL Server Provider

Video

May 6th

Modern Database Administration using PowerShell and dbatools

Video

Test your Powershell code with AppVeyor for ITPros

Video

March 29th Battle of the Beards

Powershell: A Beards Favourite Shell

March 27th SQL South West User Group

Using the PowerShell SQL Provider

March 9th SQL Belfast User Group

Using the PowerShell SQL Provider

March 7th SQL North East User Group

Green is good, Red is bad: Turning Checklists into Pester Tests

PowerShell dbatools / SQL Server module

March 6th – Notts Dev Workshop Introduction to PowerShell

Code

February 15th –  PowerShell ❤ SQL Server: Modern Database Administration with dbatools and dbareports

Combined Dutch SQL and PowerShell User Group – Utrecht

February 10th – Powershell ❤ SQL Server Modern Database Administration

MS Cloud Summit Paris – Pre Con

January 23rd – A full day of PowerShell from basics to Azure and SQL Server

SQL Saturday Vienna

January 20th – Modern Database Administration using PowerShell and dbatools

January 19th –  SQL Saturday Pre-Con SQL Server and PowerShell – Better Together. Building the Modern DBAs Tools

2016

SQL Saturday Slovenia

December 10th – Green is good, Red is bad: Turning Checklists into Pester Tests
How I use PowerShell to automate the installation & upgrade of DBA scripts

Southampton SQL User Group

December 7th – Turn Your Checklist into a Pester Test

Birmingham SQL User Group

November 10th – PowerShell Loves SQL Server – Community Modules for All

PowerShell Conference Asia – Singapore

October 22nd – PowerShell, SQL and PowerBi-Reducing your Context Switching

October 22nd – Using my DBA Database to automate the install and upgrade scripts

October 21st – Powershell Profile Prepares Perfect Production Purlieu

SQL Relay Cardiff

October 4th – PowerShell Loves SQLServer – New module and community modules

SQL Relay – Guerrilla Talks

September 28th – New PowerShell Commands for SQL Server

SQL South West User Group

September 19th – New PowerShell Commands For SQL Server

Dutch PowerShell User Group

September 1st – PowerShell SQL and Power Bi

PowerShell Monday Munich

August 22nd PowerShell SQL and Power Bi

PASS PowerShell Virtual Chapter

August 18th PowerShell, SQL and Power BI – Reducing your Context Switching

Video

SQL Southampton User Group

August 3rd New PowerShell Commands For SQL Server

SQL Saturday Manchester

July 23rd – Powershell Profile Prepares Perfect Production Purlieu

PASS PowerShell Virtual Chapter – Co Presenter

July 6th –  The State of PowerShell, SQL Server, and SQLPS Video

SQL Saturday Dublin

June 18th – Making Powershell Useful for your Team

SQL Relay – Guerrilla Talks

April 27thFour things you should know to effectively learn PowerShell

Video

Powershell Conference Europe

April 21st

Power Bi, PowerShell and DBA Double Session Rob Sewell Part1

Video

Power Bi, PowerShell and DBA Double Session Rob Sewell Part2

Video

Code – https://github.com/SQLDBAWithABeard/DBA-Database

Making Powershell Useful For Your Team

Video 

Cardiff SQL User Group

March 30th – Return of the Beards PowerShell, SQL and PowerBi-Reducing your Context Switching

Code – https://github.com/SQLDBAWithABeard/DBA-Database

SQL Saturday Exeter

March 12th Using Power Bi with my DBA Database

Code – https://github.com/SQLDBAWithABeard/DBA-Database

SQL Southampton

February 3rd PowerShell, SQL and PowerBi-Reducing your Context Switching

Code – https://github.com/SQLDBAWithABeard/DBA-Database

SQL South West

January 25th – PowerShell, SQL and PowerBi-Reducing your Context Switching

Code – https://github.com/SQLDBAWithABeard/DBA-Database

2015

SQL Saturday Southampton 2015 December 5th

Using Power Bi with my DBA Database

SQL Relay

Birmingham October 15th – Making Powershell useful for your team

Cardiff October 14th – Using Power Bi with my DBA Database

Bristol October 13th – Using Power Bi with my DBA Database

London October 12th – Continuous Learning 2.0

PASS Virtual Chapter Professional Development

October 7th – Continuous Learning 2.0

SQL South West

August 17th – Continuous Learning 2.0
Azure SQL VM Automated Backup and Azure Automated Patching

SQL Relay

July 31 – Making Powershell useful for your team

SQL Saturday Exeter

April 25th Making Powershell useful for your team

Cardiff SQL User Group

March 31st – Battle of the BeardsMaking Powershell useful for your team

PASS Virtual Chapter PowerShell

March 19th  – Making Powershell useful for your teamWebinar Recording

2014

SQL NorthEast

Tue September 16th – PowerShell Box of tricks

SQL South West

May 15th –   PowerShell Box of tricks

SQL Saturday Exeter

March 22 –   PowerShell Box of tricks

2013

Cardiff SQL User Group

October 1st –   PowerShell Box of tricks

SQL South West

May 17th –