AI for DBAs

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New release — a technical book by Ward T. Minson

The Birth
of Bob.

an autonomous agent for SQL Server self-healing & network monitoring

A field manual for building a local AI agent that lives in front of a production SQL Server. Why cloud LLMs are wrong for regulated database work, what the sensor / reasoning / actuator architecture actually looks like in code, and what eighteen months of putting one of these systems through real operational conditions taught me. 69 pages. Free to read, free to download.

Read online → Download PDF
~ from the notebook ~

Latest notes.

Field notes from building Bob and the surrounding territory: monitoring strategy, regulated data, agent architecture, on-call practice.

Anomaly Detection: When to Reach for Statistics, When to Reach for AI

Threshold alerts catch the bug you predicted. Statistical methods catch the drift you didn't. LLMs add the explanation that makes the alert actually useful at 2 AM. Mixing the three buys you the kind of monitoring that catches plan regressions before they become incidents.

Read all notes →

~ in three sketches ~

How it works.

From a vague idea to a deployed automation in about the time it takes to finish your coffee.

1

Sketch the flow

Drag boxes, draw arrows. Describe the trigger in plain English.

2

AI fills the gaps

It writes the SQL, the cron, and the alert. You read it and tweak.

3

Ship & sleep

Roll it out with one click. Auto-rollback if anything looks wrong.

~ a peek at the cockpit ~

Your databases, drawn.

Charts you can actually read. Numbers you can actually trust. No 12-color heatmap nightmares.

Bob Console home view: SQL Server Health summary, Bob's Evolution status, Bob's Situation panel, Monitor sidebar with score trend
Bob · Home — the console. Health, evolution, situation, monitor — all on one screen.
Bob SQL Health: instance metrics, CPU and batch trends, cache hit, page life expectancy, agent jobs, disk volumes
Bob · SQL Health — instance metrics, agent jobs, disk volumes, CPU and memory trends.
Bob Evolution dashboard: cycles, applied modifications, average score, score trend, strategy mix, sacred functions, reasoning styles
Bob · Evolution — cycles, applied mods, score trend, strategy mix, sacred functions, reasoning styles.
Bob Forge: the self-modification pipeline. Proposes code changes against itself, runs the smoke tests, and applies only what passes the confidence gate.
Bob · Forge — self-modification pipeline. Propose, score, smoke-test, apply — or roll back.
Bob Soul: the agent's memory, identity, and authority matrix — the part of Bob that survives a restart
Bob · Soul — memory, identity, authority. The part of Bob that survives a restart.
Bob Kanban Board: backlog, to do, in progress, done, failed, cancelled. Every action Bob proposes lives here for human approval.
Bob · Kanban Board — every action Bob proposes lives here. Approve, reject, or watch it execute.
Bob Status Report: automated health digest. Heartbeat status, watchdog deltas, telemetry, authority-circuit state, fleet status across local desktop, Ollama Primary and Secondary inference hosts, Gitea server, plus a 16-host network catalog snapshot.
Bob · Status Report — the automated health digest. Heartbeat, fleet, network catalog — what Bob tells you when nobody is watching.
~ how to get bob ~

Three ways to bring Bob home.

Start with the field kit and wire it up yourself, run a guided pilot in your environment, or hand the keys to a regulated estate over for a sovereign install. All prices one-time, no subscription.

Field Kit
$1,999

For the DBA who wants to wire Bob into their own home lab and learn by doing.

  • Full Bob source release
  • Reasoning-layer prompt templates and DMV probe queries
  • Three-layer architecture reference, ready to deploy on your hardware
  • Two weeks of installation Q&A over email
Buy the field kit
Most popular
Pilot
$7,999

A guided 90-day install in your stack. We size the GPU host, wire the actuators, and tune Bob to your workload together.

  • Everything in the Field Kit
  • Consumer-grade GPU host included. Ubuntu Server LTS + Ollama pre-installed and configured:
    CPUAMD Ryzen 9 9950X (16C/32T, Zen 5)
    MotherboardASRock Rack B650D4U-2T/2L2T (BMC, IPMI, dual 10GbE)
    RAM (ECC)128 GB DDR5-5600 ECC UDIMM (2×64 GB)
    GPUNVIDIA RTX 5090 32 GB
    Chassis4U rackmount with 2× 1600 W Titanium redundant PSUs
    Storage2 TB NVMe Gen5 (boot)
    CoolingNoctua NH-D15 (or equivalent high-end air cooler)
  • Hands-on installation: sensors, reasoning layer, actuator gating
  • Snapshot-before-apply wired to your Proxmox or VM platform
  • Up to 5 SQL Server instances under continuous monitoring
  • 90 days of weekly tuning calls and email support
Start a pilot →
Sovereign
$17,999

White-glove deployment for regulated estates. NERC CIP, HIPAA, and GDPR ready out of the box.

  • Everything in the Pilot tier
  • Commercial-grade rack server included. New build, Ubuntu Server LTS pre-installed:
    CPUAMD EPYC 9124 (16C/32T, Zen 4)
    MotherboardSupermicro H13SSL-N (IPMI/BMC built-in)
    RAM128 GB DDR5-4800 ECC (4×32 GB RDIMM)
    GPUNVIDIA L40S 48 GB PCIe
    Chassis4U with 2× 1600 W Titanium redundant PSUs
    Storage2× 1 TB NVMe (boot + data)
    CoolingSP5 heatsink, server fans, cables
  • Up to 50 SQL Server instances under continuous monitoring
  • Custom MCP servers for your internal stack (CMDB, ticketing, monitoring)
  • Compliance documentation pack: HIPAA, NERC CIP, GDPR, SOC 2
  • Source license: modify Bob in-house under your own change control
  • 12 months direct line, named on-call engineer, 4-hour P0 SLA
  • Annual rebuild as the open-weight model layer evolves
Talk to us
Bob is not plug-and-play. Every tier includes training and calibration to your specific environment – your SQL Server workload, your wait-stat baselines, your remediation policies, your team's escalation conventions. The Field Kit ships with prompt templates and two weeks of installation Q&A to do this yourself. The Pilot reserves 90 days of guided weekly tuning. The Sovereign assigns a named on-call engineer for 12 months. The agent gets sharper the longer it runs in your stack.
A note on the free stack: Ollama and Ubuntu Server are both free and open-source. You can download them yourself from ollama.com and ubuntu.com/server at no cost. We do not charge for either. We charge for the Bob system: the agent code, the integration work, the training, and (on Pilot and Sovereign) the hardware that runs it.

All tiers ship with the open-weight model and a local Ollama install. Zero ongoing license fees. The Pilot tier includes a consumer-grade GPU host; the Sovereign tier includes a commercial-grade EPYC rack server with a datacenter GPU. The Field Kit is software-only. Power and rack space remain the buyer's responsibility on every tier. Need a different shape (multi-region, air-gapped, custom audit package)? Use the contact form.

Ready to talk shop?

Pick a tier, send a message, or ask the question that does not fit any of the boxes above. Replies come from a human inside one business day.

Get in touch →