Carter Consulting, LLC
Enterprise SQL Server · Minneapolis

The architect who still writes the scripts.

Twenty-five years of enterprise SQL Server — cloud migration, day-to-day ownership, and finishing data projects that stalled. One senior engineer, working directly with your team.

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SQL Server 6.5 → 2022 LLC since 2008 Corp-to-corp Remote, US-based

What I do

01

SQL Server to cloud migration

Moving production SQL Server estates to AWS EC2 — instance and storage sizing, BYOL enterprise licensing economics, Always On availability groups, PowerShell-automated builds, and cutovers measured in minutes rather than weekends.

For teams who have been quoted a migration and want the licensing math checked first
02

Fractional DBA and platform architect

Part-time ownership of a SQL Server estate: high availability and disaster recovery, patching with minimal downtime, performance baselining, index and statistics maintenance, security policy, build automation, and mentoring the people who inherit it.

For shops too small for a full-time senior DBA and too large to go without one
03

Data and ETL rescue

Stalled SSIS and ETL programs, pipelines whose authors have left, migrations that missed their date. I come in, read the code, find the real blocker, and finish it — then leave behind standards, logging, and documentation so it does not stall again.

For projects already behind schedule, where adding people has not helped

Selected engagements

Fortune 100 retailer Consumer electronics 2014 – present

Eleven years on one SQL Server platform

Eight years as DBA for the systems behind the retailer's returns and trade-in operation. Moved its service and repair tracking system from a SQL Server 2005 cluster to SQL Server 2017 Always On Availability Groups, and a third-party-hosted application to Azure SQL Managed Instance.

Since 2023, an L3 engineer on the database platform team, supporting several hundred SQL Server instances and thousands of vCPUs across on-premises and AWS. The team's go-to SQL Server DBA for decisions and delivery since the team split in July 2023, and formally its lead SQL Server DBA since August 2025. The work is Availability Group engineering, migration and decommission automation in PowerShell and Terraform, and the build runbooks other engineers follow. Re-platformed SQL Server from RDS to EC2 after modeling the license cost.

Drove remediation of AWS SQL Server snapshot backup failures with the AWS and infrastructure teams. The production failure rate fell from 25% to 1.6%.

Minneapolis investment firm Asset management 2014

A risk reporting backlog, cleared

Brought in as risk management data architect on a reporting program that had fallen behind. Designed the risk reporting database, introduced SSIS standards for error handling, logging and configuration, built loaders for third-party loan and fixed-income liquidity data, security reference feeds, and the portfolio accounting system, and designed a ranked pricing structure and user-managed SSRS subscription model.

Compliance and data-quality alerting went live on a schedule the prior team had estimated in months.

National real estate services firm 26 regional business units 2005 – 2007

Three terabytes, fifteen minutes of downtime

Senior DBA on a market share and analysis platform used by regional management nationwide. A failing SAN forced a production server move; the initial assessment called for three days of downtime.

Scripted change-tracking let the copy run while the system stayed up. Actual downtime was under 15 minutes against a 3-day estimate.

Track record

Outcomes from twenty-five years of SQL Server work, delivered as Carter Consulting and, earlier, as a contract database developer and DBA.

Market analysis platform replaced an external subscription — $2.5M immediate, $7.5M long-term savings
National real estate services firm
Backend standardization took one DBA from 5 to 20 regional data feeds
National real estate services firm
Web component redesign cut load time 75% — $150K per quarter in net savings
National real estate services firm
Extranet tuning: page load 1.2s → 0.33s, server utilization 85% → 40%, avoiding a new server
Global manufacturer · 21,000 partner users
In-house billing system replaced a third-party platform — $1.3M annual ROI
Retail energy provider
SSIS test framework ran 10,000+ automated tests for correctness, throughput and error detection
Agricultural cooperative · payments
ETL redesign ran 50% faster on less storage; SQL 2000 estate migrated to SQL 2008
National wireless carrier
Document imaging tuning more than tripled documents keyed per hour
State revenue department

How I work

01
Read what is actually there

Before recommending anything: the code, the execution plans, the tickets, the licensing agreement. Most stalled projects have a specific blocker that nobody has named out loud yet.

02
Put the numbers in front of the decision

Cost models, downtime estimates, and performance baselines, written so a director can follow them. If the math says the current plan is right, that is the answer.

03
Build it, and automate the repeat

Anything done more than twice becomes a PowerShell script or an Agent job. The goal is a process your team can run without me on the call.

04
Hand it over properly

Standards, runbooks, logging, and time spent with the people who will own it. Engagements that end cleanly are the ones that turn into referrals.

Stack

SQL Server 2005–2022 T-SQL Always On AG Failover clustering Query Store Index design Backup / restore PowerShell Terraform AWS EC2 AWS RDS AWS VPC Aurora PostgreSQL Azure SQL MI Azure VMs / VNets BYOL licensing SSIS SSRS ETL / ELT Type 1 / Type 2 loads Dynatrace C# Git

About

Carter Consulting is Jim Carter. I have been working on SQL Server since version 6.5, in nuclear plant control rooms, state gaming commissions, wireless carriers, hospitals, hedge funds, and now a Fortune 100 retailer's cloud migration.

What has stayed constant is the shape of the work: come into a system somebody else built, understand it faster than expected, and make it measurably better without breaking it. I own architecture decisions, and I still write the scripts that implement them — those two things are rarer together than either is alone.

I work corp-to-corp through the LLC, not as a full-time employee. Carter Consulting carries general and professional liability coverage, and I am comfortable with enterprise procurement, MSAs, and security review.

B.S. Computer Science, Southeastern Louisiana University. Based in Minnetonka, Minnesota; remote since 2020.

Contact

If you have a SQL Server problem with a date attached to it, send the details.

Emailjim.carter@cartermn.com
EntityCarter Consulting, LLC — Minnesota
EngagementCorp-to-corp, hourly or retainer
LocationMinneapolis–St. Paul, working remotely nationwide