I've never tried password expiration within SQL (we use AD accounts when we need to expire passwords), but technet has http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms161959.aspx

"Password expiration policies are used to manage the lifespan of...

You mentioned a Compellent, which I presume to be a Compellent SAN. If you really want to dig into this, you'll need to work with the SAN team to...

Be aware that SQL Server has no mechanism that I'm aware of that can guarantee that existing passwords actually comply with the password policy.

Any password may be entered when the...

Have a table that isn't compressed, put in a CHAR(20), insert a bunch of rows of 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa'. Checkpoint the write.

Open up a file (.mdf or backup file) in a...

My apologies for the necromancy on a 2012 thread, but in looking for exactly this, I found both this thread and code to do so that belongs here.

Credit to Ryan...

I know this is an old thread, but please note that Celko and Improved Celko are the only ones (of the non-CLR ones in the test harness, as written) that...

Gail and Jeff hit the nail on the head in the first two replies.

With the benefit of all the posts ahead of mine, I suspect your actual question is closer...

If they're really doing that many copy only (presumably Full) backups, then why not switch everything to Full or Bulk-logged recovery model and tell them you can always use PITR...

Thank you for bringing this up - MSA's look to be very interesting once servers and the domain are at 2008R2 functional level or higher, and at least somewhat interesting...

Separately, you need to use different passwords on each instance so that you're not worried about changing them. Work hard up front so that you're willing and ready to...

L' Eomot Inversé (9/12/2013)

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if the server has a sensible password policy, that's a good thing to do

...

Do remember that draconian rules requiring excessively frequent password changes are always part...

My mistake! Editing post.

I agree in theory, but in a disaster recovery scenario, is it then possible...

Ask, and be very specific, what your SAN admin means by "disk".

Remember, you have, in some ordering (ask your SAN admin)

Physical spindles/SSD's

RAID groups

LUNs

MetaLUNs (sets of LUNs in a RAID)

For SQL...

A few years ago, I worked extensively with Double Metaphone code in straight SQL - it provided very good results for U.S. names and addresses http://www.sqlservercentral.com/scripts/Miscellaneous/30219/%5B/url%5D.

SOUNDEX, however, I rate as...