Nearly a decade ago I posted a blog about how to get into SQL Server if you find yourself locked out. It remains one of the most viewed posts on the site because it’s a common issue. I strike it at least a couple of times a month where we have a client who wants us to assess their SQL environment, but they actually don’t know who can provide sysadmin access.

Back in 2013 I listed a bunch of ways to get into SQL if you didn’t have a SQL Sysadmin credential to use or access to someone who did, but I wanted to revisit it today because that’s not my go to anymore. A lot has changed in the last 9 years, and one of the most impactful has been the awesome community tool DBATools. You can check it out at DBATools.io. Honestly this set of powershell scripts streamlines so many of the processes I used to do manually and SQL access is one of these.

Using the Reset-DbaAdmin command you can do all the manual steps outlined in the post above in a line of powershell. You should be warned you are still not some super untraceable hacker – the command restarts SQL in the same way the manual method does, but it does it all in one line of code, handles a bunch of the more common issues with that method(such as someone else stealing your connection) and it does it all SUPER FAST.

So if you have just started a job and there’s a critical server that no-one knows the credentials for, or the password vault has a set of invalid credentials, or whatever reason is preventing you logging in as sysadmin – check out DBATools for a quick and easy way of getting back into your server – and as an added bonus you will now have access to one of the best free additions to your DBA toolbelt.