ProActive Support Services

Open Query offers proactive support to meet your MySQL needs and be kind to your budget, through flexible ongoing arrangements. We work using email through our issue tracking system, instant messenging, SSH login, and sometimes over the phone, or on-site. Full pricing and other details below. Our background and subject matter expertise is proven. Have you got our book?

Key areas we assist with include but are not limited to...

• Ongoing preventative maintenance: we log in, tune and report back
• Schema and query design, performance analysis and tuning
• Problem analysis and resolution
• Setup of appropriate monitoring tools (not MySQL-specific)
• System/network administration of the MySQL-related infrastructure (application servers, storage, etc)
• Database Audits based on configurations, security and server performance
• Design of MySQL Replication and clustering scenarios
• Guidance on upgrades, and migration from/to other databases

To discuss your specific needs or to simply sign up, contact us now!

Pricing

Our pricing for support/consulting is simple, per hour. While you can request our assistance on an ad-hoc basis, we value building an ongoing relationship. If you commit to a number of hours per month, we can resource appropriately and assist more effectively since we'll be in-the-know about your infrastructure already; and you will note that it's also cheaper. This is completely unlike a retainer system: with our services we fully aim to use the hours, so there's no wastage for you. Pricing and more details below.

To discuss your needs or to simply sign up, please contact us and we will help you make MySQL perform! 

Terms

• Charged in one of the following currencies: AUD (excl.GST), USD, CAD, EUR at the price shown, so both you and Open Query are not subject by exchange rates. Generally we don't even convert internally, we just pay our engineers directly in their local currency.
• The above table is intended to help find the most suitable offering for your needs, we're not trying to up-sell. The purpose is a mutual commitment whereby you are guaranteed to get the resourcing you require.
• The base rate we used in the above table for contracted remote assistance is 125, with everything else calculated from that base with discounts for more hours and longer commitments.
• We charge actual hours spent on you, rather than using complicated math with corresponding higher rates. So, if you would like us to write up an extensive report on a particular project, that's simply charged at the (remote) hourly rate. So you know exactly where you're at, no funny business.
• Scheduled on-site support is charged at 1.5x base rate plus travel expenses (car km or flight costs). You may use your pre-paid hours for on-site support, this works out to 2 on-site hours for 3 contract hours; travel expenses are charged separately.
• Unscheduled rates are x2 for business hours, x3 all other hours. Availability not guaranteed (we greatly value our life outside work, and we prefer to focus on preventing fires rather than fighting them). Note: we only handle one emergency case per client, ever. You may come in as an urgent case, but we really don't want you to stay that way.
• There is no limitation of scope within the agreed realm (i.e., MySQL), so we don't charge extra for assistance with more servers, replication, or performance - aren't all questions essentially about performance, anyway?
• Your monthly commitment is billed per quarter, six-monthly or annually, payable in advance. Based on payment of the initial invoice we will time sending out each next invoice appropriately, so you will always be on time without worries. You will pay promptly, or we may choose to not do further business with you. Yes, we do that.
• You may use up to 50% of the next (or previous) month's hours, as we appreciate that your exact needs will fluctuate.
• You may book an employee in for a scheduled Open Query training day using 4 hours; for the higher support tiers and advanced course days, this provides significant savings from the regular price of a training day.
• Unused hours simply expire, but you are encouraged to utilise hours effectively for your benefit: have us take a periodic peek at your server status, analyse the slow query log, and so on! We're more than happy to discuss what's most appropriate for you at any given point in time.
• We recommend the (free) OurDelta builds of MySQL and MariaDB as they provide additional management and measurement instrumentation as well as performance benefits, however we will try to help you with any MySQL version and build; we have in-house expertise all the way back to MySQL version 3.23.
• Requests are initiated through our tracking system, and assigned to an available Open Query engineer. All correspondence including emails, phone call summaries, configuration, status and logfiles, get attached to your request, and of course the time spent is recorded in this way as well. As Open Query has a distributed infrastructure, phone or Skype calls are generally initiated by the assigned Open Query engineer.
• We aim for a response time within the next business day, with all assistance given on a best-effort basis. Our focus is to help improve your setup so that emergencies are prevented.

To discuss your needs or to simply sign up, please contact us and we will help you make MySQL perform!