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A Step by Step Guide to the Availability Group (AG) Listener

Availability databases hosted on SQL Server Always On Availability Groups (AG) can be connected using a unique Virtual Network Name (VNN), called the Availability Group Listener. When an Availability Group is enabled, clients can connect to databases in both primary and secondary replicas without explicitly specifying the SQL Server instance name. You don’t even need […]

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What counts for a DBA: Foresight

Of all the valuable attributes of a DBA, from passion to humility to practicality, perhaps one of the most important attributes may turn out to be the most seemingly nebulous: foresight. According to Free Dictionary, foresight is the "perception of the significance and nature of events before they have occurred". Foresight does not come naturally to most people, as the […]

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Question of the Day

Symmetric Key Encryption

If I run this statement in SQL Server 2025, how is the password encrypted?

CREATE SYMMETRIC KEY MySymmetricKey
WITH ALGORITHM = AES_256,
KEY_SOURCE = 'My secret key source passphrase',
IDENTITY_VALUE = 'My secret identity value'
ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = 'S&perS#cretP@ssword7';
GO

See possible answers