Looking for SQL Recruiting agency

I'm sure many of you MVP's are independents, but we are looking for a single
SQL Server specialist for a large project and were looking for a respectable
agency for finding VERY high level candidates.
New system will be multi-million transactions per day. [Clustered VLDB].
Must be up 99.999% with triple redundancy.
We're looking for someone who has done a comparable project and has
references to prove.
Thanks."Chris" <rooster575@.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23h7HHfrVHHA.1180@.TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> I'm sure many of you MVP's are independents, but we are looking for a
> single SQL Server specialist for a large project and were looking for a
> respectable agency for finding VERY high level candidates.
> New system will be multi-million transactions per day. [Clustered VLDB].[/vbco
l]
Note Multi-million transactions per day doesn't necessarily mean a VLDB
(just making sure we're on the same page.)
I was recently managing a db that would do millions of transactions per day
and the DB in question was under 10 gigabytes I believe.
[vbcol=seagreen]
> Must be up 99.999% with triple redundancy.
Define triple redundancy?
As for 5 9s. I've found very few companies really truly a) need that b) can
afford it.
That's 5 minutes of outage a year. Do you really absolutely need this?
How do you plan on doing simple maintenance like applying patches, etc?
Many companies once they look at the costs involved, etc. decide that they
really don't mean 5 9s.
A rule of thumb that I saw years back that has often worked for me is that
for each 9 you want, figure on doubling costs.
So going from 90% to 99% uptime, doubles your cost. 99.9% doubles it again,
etc.

> We're looking for someone who has done a comparable project and has
> references to prove.
>
I'm not sure what you have is a project or an ongoing need. If it's a
project, what do you plan on doing when the person leaves? Achieving 5 9s
is an ongoing job, not a "project".
(Sorry if I'm sounding negative here, just trying to get a better feel for
what you really need/want.)

> Thanks.
>
--
Greg Moore
SQL Server DBA Consulting
sql (at) greenms.com http://www.greenms.com