Database · Cloud · AI Platform Cost Engineering

Cut database, cloud, and AI cost —
without betting reliability on it

AKS helps engineering teams reduce database, cloud, and AI platform cost through production-grade diagnostics, automation, and senior architecture review. Read-only, evidence-driven, and scoped before it starts.

You may need this if:

  • Your Aurora or Postgres bills are spiking and you do not know why
  • Your AI token / inference spend is growing faster than you can forecast
  • You suspect waste but lack the time or outside perspective to prove it
  • You can see the spend in dashboards but not why it is high or how to fix it safely
  • Your team needs senior judgment on cost and reliability without a full-time hire

Cost & Reliability Reviews

Three focused, productized reviews. Read-only diagnostics, ranked findings, and a 30/60/90-day plan — no promised savings percentage.

Databases · Aurora / PostgreSQL

Database Cost & Reliability Review

Where database spend goes, and the reliability risks sitting next to it. Prioritized findings with the math.

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AI workloads

AI Cost Engineering Advisory

Token spend, model selection, caching, and retrieval cost — reviewed like a database, with a forecastable cost model.

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Observability

Database Observability Review

Can you see what's expensive and what's about to break? We map the gaps and specify exactly what to add.

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Free: the 30-Point Database Cost Review Checklist + a full sample report.

Get the resources

Broader Engineering Capabilities

Cost & reliability reviews are the focus, but engagements also draw on 20+ years across these areas — senior judgment without a full-time hire.

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Database Health Checks

Review configuration, indexes, query plans, backups, replication, capacity, and operational risk. You get a short findings report with prioritized fixes.

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Performance Tuning

Slow query triage, wait analysis, connection pool review, index cleanup, and workload-specific tuning for PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, MongoDB, and cloud databases.

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Database Migrations

Migration planning, compatibility review, cutover design, rollback strategy, dual-write or CDC patterns, and risk review for commercial-to-open-source and cloud moves.

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Backup & Recovery Review

Validate whether backups are restorable, recovery targets are realistic, failover behavior is understood, and runbooks match the actual production system.

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Remote DBA Support

Part-time database operations help for teams that need expert review, incident support, maintenance planning, release checks, or a second set of eyes on risky changes.

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AI & Agent Systems

LLM application architecture, RAG pipeline design, agent orchestration frameworks, evaluation infrastructure, and production guardrails for AI systems.

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Database Engineering

Schema design, query optimization, migration strategy, and operational runbooks for PostgreSQL, MongoDB, vector databases, and multi-model data platforms.

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Cloud & Distributed Systems

Multi-region architecture, reliability engineering, cost optimization, and system design for AWS, GCP, Azure, and OCI. CAP theorem tradeoffs made concrete.

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Architecture Reviews & Audits

In-depth technical review of existing systems: design gaps, scaling bottlenecks, security posture, and a prioritized remediation roadmap you can act on.

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Cost Optimization & License Governance

Cloud spend analysis, right-sizing, and reservation strategy across AWS, GCP, Azure, and OCI. Software license inventory system design — tracking entitlements, usage, and renewal exposure at scale.

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Technical Leadership

Principal engineering advisory, engineering strategy, hiring criteria, and technical due diligence for investors and acquirers evaluating a codebase or team.

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System Design Coaching

Team workshops on distributed systems, database internals, and production architecture patterns. Interview-ready system design preparation for senior engineers.

Free Engineering Tools

Quick calculators and selectors for teams planning database moves, architecture decisions, and AI data platform sizing.

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Migration economics

Oracle / SQL Server to PostgreSQL ROI Calculator

Estimate license exposure, migration effort, and payback scenarios before you start a platform move.

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Architecture selection

Data Store Architecture Selector

Compare relational, document, cache, search, vector, and event-driven storage patterns against workload constraints.

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✓

Migration readiness

Database Migration Readiness Checklist

Check schema, workload, cutover, rollback, observability, and ownership gaps before a migration enters execution.

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AI data platforms

Vector Database Sizing Estimator

Plan rough storage, embedding, index, and query-volume assumptions for RAG and semantic search systems.

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Have a result you want reviewed?

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How Engagements Work

No retainer traps. No mystery pricing. Three steps from first contact to active work.

01

Discovery Call

30-minute free call. You describe the problem; we dig into the questions that usually get skipped. No pitch deck, no NDA required to start.

02

Scope & Proposal

Written proposal with clear deliverables, timeline, and fixed-price or retainer options. No surprise invoices at the end of the month.

03

Active Engagement

Advisory calls, async Slack reviews, written architecture documents, or fully embedded work — matched to what your team actually needs.

What Engagements Produce

Concrete outputs. Not presentations — working documents your engineering team can act on.

Sample Deliverables

  • Architecture review memo with findings, risk tiers, and a prioritized fix list
  • Database health-check report covering indexes, query plans, vacuuming, replication, and capacity
  • Migration readiness scorecard with compatibility gaps, cutover risk, and a go/no-go recommendation
  • AI agent guardrails checklist — permission boundaries, loop detection, kill-switch wiring, and cost controls

Typical Engagements

  • 2-hour architecture review — async read of your system + one focused call with written findings
  • 1-week database health check — query plan audit, configuration review, replication and backup validation
  • 2-week migration readiness assessment — schema compatibility, CDC feasibility, cutover plan, rollback design
  • Monthly advisory retainer — standing availability for incident escalations, design reviews, and release checks

Representative Problems

  • Aurora cost spike with no obvious query culprit
  • PostgreSQL connection storm under peak traffic
  • Oracle or SQL Server to PostgreSQL migration stalled at compatibility gaps
  • AI agent making uncontrolled writes to a production database
  • Replication lag climbing toward RPO threshold during a release
  • Schema migration deadlocking on a live-traffic table

Engineering Field Notes

The blog at rajivonai.com is the best signal of how AKS Engineering approaches systems problems — architecture tradeoffs, failure modes, real-world database behavior, and AI infrastructure decisions written for practitioners.

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About AKS Engineering

AKS Engineering (AKS Software Solutions LLC) brings 20+ years of experience designing and operating distributed systems, data platforms, and cloud infrastructure across startups, scale-ups, and enterprise organizations.

Engagements are offered on a project and advisory basis — for teams that need principal-level judgment on architecture, database systems, and AI infrastructure without a full-time hire.

The engineering blog at rajivonai.com is a public record of production experience — what breaks, what scales, what the textbooks miss, and what actually matters when a system is under load.

PostgreSQL MongoDB Vector Databases AWS GCP Azure OCI Kubernetes LLM Systems RAG Pipelines Distributed Systems System Design AI Agents Data Platforms

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