DBA without system administrator privileges

  • I'm stuck with not having admin rights at the OS level yet still having to manage SQL Servers. I haven't had any problems so far that has blocked my job as a DBA: I've been able to run Profiler when I need to, at least that hasn't been a prob. But I have run into problems where I have less than full rights to drives: I have one server where I can't see anything through Windows Explorer on one entire drive letter, but I can see directories if I try to create devices on it. On another server, there are directories where I can create databases, but I can't delete anything.

    My boss says 'that's the way things are done today.' I don't buy it. I don't care about the rest of the servers on our network, I just want admin access on my SQL Servers! *grrr....*

    It's enough to drive a man to drink. Oh, wait -- I already drink. I wonder what's next? 🙂 ('looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue!')

    At least I finally got proper access to our SNAP server, so my backups are now on a separate box and those will soon be snapped up by Tivoli twice an hour from a remote location. I'm feeling better about my DR, but it still has a way to go.

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    [font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]

  • Wayne,

    I have great sympathy - I work as DBA for a large financial institution where data security is a high priority.  I have read-only access to PROD data but no sa or dbo rights on SQL and no rights at the OS level on our servers.  All schema and data changes have to be scripted, go through many layers of approvals and are eventually installed by the 3rd party host. 

    Fortunately, we were able to get Spotlight and Quest Performance Analysis on the boxes - and SQL Compare let's me compare schema and generate scripts. Before that, administering the system and monitoring performance were like swimming the English channel with your hands and feet tied together....... 

    Good luck,

    Harley 

  • 'looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue!'
    Thanks for the fond movie memory!


    MISfIT

  • I was confident that someone would get it, it's one of my favs!

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    [font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]

  • What movies was that?

  • Airplane! Starring, amongst others, Peter Graves, Kareem Abdul Jabar, Leslie Nielson. The first(?) of the Abrams/Zucker/Zucker (or was it Zucker/Abrams/Abrams, I never remember) who did the Police Squad TV series and later went on to do the three Naked Gun movies, Top Secret, Jane Austin's Mafia, etc.

    The joke is that one of the air traffic controllers, when the flight gets in trouble, starts with "looks like I picked the wrong week to give up caffeine", then it's amphetamines, and it goes downhill from there. 🙂 I think the last one was the sniffing glue line.

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    [font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]

  • It can be annoying to not have local admin rights on Windows, but it's never been a big deal to me. If there are things I need done, then someone else has to do them and if my work slows, the bottleneck won't be me.

    Taking that approach should improve things. Or get you admin access

  • I was the lead DBA in a company that decided that the System Administration department (we DBAs were in the Systems Programming department) would take over responsibility for all changes to production. That irked for awhile, but lessened my workload considerably. Then one day they changed the sa passwords, and wouldn't give them to us. After a week or two of being asked to help do OUR work, that decision was quietly reversed, without argument.

    It seems fairly common nowadays for DBAs not to have Windows administration privileges; and usually that doesn't bother me much, if the Windows admins are reasonably responsive. But a "DBA" without sa? BS!

  • "But a "DBA" without sa? BS!" - it's my reality now

    I'm working as a consultant on a SQL7 to SQL2000 migration for one of the largest banks in Canada and their policy is not to give "sa" privileges to anybody even in DEV environment. Only a couple of senior DBA's from the head office have full permissions.

    Windows admin group? Yeah, right, keep dreaming!

    All I can say it is tough, but doable, you just script everything and send it to them.

    But most importantly, if they willing to pay me to sit and wait until the head office cares to execute my scripts - I'm fine with it!

  • I assume that you have a test database that you can run your code against, or is everything desk checked?

    I have no problem with the network admin guys not having SQL rights, but I really hate not having admin access on my SQL servers! I don't want or need access to the whole bloody network, I just want control over my boxes!

    *sigh*

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    [font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]

  • Just like I said, no admin access to any SQL server/instance, only "db_owner" in certain databases, can't even run some system procs, i.e. sp_helplogins...

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