Rob Sewell

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