Mike WalshMike Walsh

Mike loves mentoring clients on the right Systems or High Availability architectures because he enjoys those lightbulb moments and loves watching the right design and setup come together for a client. He loves the architecture talks about the cloud - and he's enjoying building a Managed SQL Server DBA practice that is growing while maintaining values and culture. He started Straight Path in 2010 when he decided that after over a decade working with SQL Server in various roles, it was time to try and take his experience, passion, and knowledge to help clients of all shapes and sizes. Mike is a husband, and father to four great children and lives in the middle of nowhere NH.

Speaking at PASS Summit On Tour: NYC

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I’ll be speaking on Tuesday, 8/19, at the PASS Summit on tour in New York City. I’ll be giving a talk in the “professional development” world this time.. And I’ll be doing the same session at the PASS Summit in Seattle this fall. This time, rather than talk about SQL Server DBA tips, upgrades, migrations, … Read more

Your Silent Face: The Illusion of the Safety of “Never Patching” Your SQL Servers.

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No hearing, or breathing… No movement, no colors… Just silence… Sounds peaceful. Sounds serene. And in a world where entropy didn’t exist, it could even stay that way. That’s not our world, though. Our SQL Servers (in whatever flavor they exist) don’t live in utopia. They live in a world where bad actors are trying … Read more

SQL Server Vulnerability Alert: CVE-2025-49719

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On patch Tuesday this week, Microsoft released an Important severity security update (a CVSS base score of 7.5) The details of this 0-day exploit are available to read at the NIST site, and the Microsoft security update site. In short, the exploit that Microsoft has discovered and subsequently fixed can allow information disclosure. (That’s the … Read more

Bizarre Love Triangle (Sysadmins, AV tools and DBAs)

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“Every time I think of you, I feel shot right through with a bolt of blue…” – If your SQL Servers (and especially your SQL Server Availability Groups and Failover Cluster instances) could speak – that’s what they’d say about the times your security and sysadmin teams deploy a new AV tool without talking to … Read more

Blue Monday: Not for Your SQL Servers!

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Blue Monday: Not for Your SQL Servers

Monday morning: you’re back at work, but your SQL Server estate had a weekend from hell. Some companies find that out the hard way—every single Monday.It’s almost like SQL Server is taunting you, “How does it feel to treat me like you do?” I See a Ship in the Harbor (Do you watch for SQL … Read more

Regret (SQL Server Edition)

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Maybe I’ve forgotten the name and the address of every patient I’ve helped throughout my years in EMS back when I was still involved, but there’s one thing I know: quite a few would say hindsight is 20/20. The older I get, the more I see how often this pattern repeats. Whether it was the … Read more