Bizarre Love Triangle (Sysadmins, AV tools and DBAs)
March 25, 2025
“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!
March 20, 2025
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)
March 19, 2025
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
On Mentoring: A T-SQL Tuesday post
March 11, 2025
Deborah Melkin is hosting the community T-SQL Tuesday #184 carnival of blog posts. Her topic is one that is near and dear to her – and also near and dear to us here at Straight Path – Mentoring and Sponsorships. I am really looking forward to reading all of the posts this topic generates. Deb … Read more
Evaluating SQL Server Managed Service Providers.
March 9, 2025
For full disclosure – this is the business we are in here at Straight Path IT Solutions. We know something about running a SQL Server Managed Services practice. While we’d love to talk to you and work with us, there are a lot of excellent firms out there like our friends at Dallas DBAs, Procure … Read more
Managing Orphaned Users in SQL Server with sp_FindOrphanedUser
September 26, 2024
Addressing orphaned users is an important piece of SQL Server security management. When left unchecked, you can accumulate an overwhelming number of users that exist in a database but do not have a correlating login in the master database, thus preventing access to the server or the database at all. There are dbatools PowerShell modules … Read more
Introducing sp_CheckBackup: Check Your SQL Server Backups for Recoverability Issues
August 14, 2024
Whether you are backing up your SQL Server databases with Ola Hallengren’s scripts, Maintenance Plans, or some third-party software, your backups are your lifeline for recovering your data in case of a disaster. So…are your databases recoverable? Do you know WHERE your most recent backups were written? Do you know WHEN they were written? Did … Read more
SQL Server Security: 3 Homework Assignments to Start Today
June 30, 2024
This post is part of our SQL Server security blog series, 30 SQL Server Security Checks in 30 Days. We’re publishing a new security check every day in the month of June. Visit our sp_CheckSecurity page to learn about our free SQL Server tool you can download and run to check your own server. Thanks … Read more
SQL Injection: Deconstructing an Attack
June 29, 2024
This post is part of our SQL Server security blog series, 30 SQL Server Security Checks in 30 Days. We’re publishing a new security check every day in the month of June. Visit our sp_CheckSecurity page to learn about our free SQL Server tool you can download and run to check your own server. As … Read more
Enhancing SQL Server Security: Reviewing and Optimizing Audits
June 28, 2024
This post is part of our SQL Server security blog series, 30 SQL Server Security Checks in 30 Days. We’re publishing a new security check every day in the month of June. Visit our sp_CheckSecurity page to learn about our free SQL Server tool you can download and run to check your own server. Audits … Read more