We're a team of 4 developers that all have access to all servers (dev, test, uat, production) and we are trying to choose the best (secure, reliable, simple etc) way to connect SQL Server (currently 2008 R2).
Things we considering:
Windows / SQL Server authentication?
What roles?
Same for all servers or different for the production servers?
Please let me know what you do and what you recommend.
If you all require the same permissions, assuming that you are working on a domain and the servers are also on the domain.
Create a Developers group on the windows domain.
Add the 4 developers to that group.
Create a Login on each sql server mapped to that group. CREATE LOGIN [domain\group] FROM WINDOWS
Assign permissions to that login, depending on what you need.
Then a new developer just needs to be added to the domain group to get the permissions to all the servers. Also any changes to permissions only have to be done once to that group.
To answer your considerations.
You should use Windows authentication over SQL Authentication where possible.
The roles you need and whether to have them the same on all servers can only be answered by yourselves IMO, but you should use the principle of least privilege and give only the minimum permissions required by the developers per server.
What we use:
Dev/test servers - Windows Authentication for ease and simplicity
UAT - SQL Server authentication (because it's usually in a different domain)
Production - No direct access - you have to use RDP. You don't want anyone accidentally connecting to production when they think they're connecting to something else.
Development
Windows authentication
Member of the db_owner role
test
Windows authentication
Member of "End user" roles
uat
Windows authentication
Member of the db_datareader role
prod
No access
We only use windows authentication because we set permissions on a domain group.
We use windows authentication
Developer Group under PDC.
Developer have full access to development/testing server and only
selects on production server some(confidential data tables even though the data is encrypted) are though not allowed like pricelist etc.
Related
Need help with connecting to SQL Server using Windows authentication by different users logging in to the clients using their domain account. We have thousands of users and is there a easy way to use a specific AD service account even though users login to these client machines using their windows account. I see some examples of that online if using IIS. But we need this to work with a client server app. Please help if there is a workaround. Thanks!
Typically you would either provision SQL Logins for the AD Groups containing the users, or (less secure) use a SQL Login with user/name and password embedded in the application configuration.
Could somebody explain how you can have different databases/security when connecting in via Windows Authentication from when someone connects via SQL authentication?
I have a customer who had to put a computer onto their network. When they did this, the computer name changed. When connecting into SQL it now has a different server name.
The thing is if I connect using a SQL username and password, I get the databases that were installed before. However If I connect using windows authentication, I do not get the database.
I would like to know what needs to be changed in order for windows authentication to see the same as a user logging in via SQL authentication.
How can I go about changing the permissions of windows authentication?
Within SQL Server, there are Logins (at the server level) and Users (at the database level). Your SQL Server login obviously has permission to the database(s) you want to see. The logins can also be windows users and/or groups. So, if you add a named windows user as a server login, you can extend that login as users in different databases. You can do the same thing with a group. So, you could have a single login to your sql server that represents all authenticated users in your domain, etc...
So, I think you need to get into SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio) and see what logins and users are defined on your SQL Server.
I have a website that is backed by a database. I requested a SQL Server login with read/write/execute privileges to be created in our Production environment, and our DBA indicated that a non-interactive service account would be preferred.
Are there any potential issues with using a service account in this manner over a SQL Server login?
According to Microsoft, it is a "best practice" to use a service account (i.e. Windows account) and use SQL logins only for legacy applications that are not able to use Windows accounts (see Microsoft Recommendation).
So, only if your website is based on a non Microsoft technology or not hosted by IIS an SQL login might be the better choice.
At my current employer's we've been using non interactive Windows accounts to connect from our ASP.NET applications to SQL server all the time without any problems. It also makes managing and deploying connection strings easier because you don't have to care about securing them.
If you have an ASP.NET application it's good to add the account under which the IIS app pool runs (or a domain group it's in) as a login on the SQL Server.
However an SQL login might also have the practical advantage to be easier to test with: E.g. you can connect to the server using this account with SQL Management Studio to check if the permissions are sufficient.
We have an application, consisting of an MS Access frontend (2007, mdb format), a few .net libraries and an SQL Server (2008) backend. I am working on an installer, which automatically installs the MS Access Runtime, our application, our libraries, SQL Server Express and configures everything.
Clearly, the MS Access application and the libraries (running in a normal, non-admin user context) need access to the SQL Server database. What is the best way to grant access to the application?
This is what I came up with. Unfortunately, all of these seem to have drawbacks:
SQL Server Compact Edition: Does not support views.
Application Roles: This seems to be best practice. However, it requires executing a stored procedure before accessing the database (I cannot pass the app credentials in the connection string). Thus, I cannot use this to attach the SQL Server tables as a linked tables in the Access MDB, which is a requirement of our Access application.
SQL Server User Instance: To quote from MSDN: "This feature will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL Server. Avoid using this feature in new development work..."
SQL Authentication: Microsoft says: "When possible, use Windows Authentication."
Using Windows authentication and granting BUILTIN\USERS full access: This is by far the easiest solution, but somehow it "seems wrong" to do that...
The application is targeted at a non-technical audience, so asking the user to configure permissions is not an option.
EDIT: Some clarification: It's a "local" application, i.e., the SQL Server is located on the same machine as the application; SQL Server access from the network is neither necessary nor desired. The software (a regular business application for managing stocks, invoices, etc.) will be available to download for free, so it should run in a variety of environments (domain/non-domain, different operating systems, etc.), and IT knowledge should not be required to install it -- apart from the usual "click on setup.exe, confirm UAC prompt, acknowledge the installation directory, etc.". I expect the most common scenarios to be "Windows XP, local admin user" and "Windows Vista/7, local admin user with UAC enabled". Since we want to follow good practices, running the application should not require "Run as Administrator" in the latter case.
#Heinzi write:
Using Windows authentication and
granting BUILTIN\USERS full access:
This is by far the easiest solution,
but somehow it "seems wrong" to do
that...
The usual approach here is to add a custom user group (e.g., "db-users") and put the users in that group. That way you can control exactly who is allowed access.
How about:
Use an Access ADP project, pre-configured to connect to the locally installed SQL Server instance.
Connect using BuiltIn\Users group (or SQL authentication) but grant only the bare minimum credentials. Enough to logon and ...
Call sp_setappprole to "elevate" the client connection to your defined application role's identity.
If sound like you have only got the tie of the iceberg. When it comes to selling and deploying access SQL applications.
I have take a different route. I have virtual computers as standalone workstation and domain server and workstation all virtual.
I have write a scripts they are a combination of VBA and VBScript.
Ask
Is the DB and App to run on single computer or different computers.
If different computer what is the name of the computer the DB is located on.
Is the DB and App to in a workgroup, homegroup or domain environment
Is the DB computer already have SQL Express or above
Is the App computer already have Access or Access Runtime installed.
If yes which version.
Will all or only limited users have access.
If limited what is the user group name of user to be have access to the data.
Does this group already exist
If No List the Name of the Users that Should Be Added to the Group
Also questions about the Admin Users and Group
The script start the virtual machines and goes through a series of steps to rep the MDB and SQL DB for deployment. Then creates an MSI for the Server Install with include a custom script that sets up the environment. Finally packages MDB in a nice MSI.
I have since enhanced the process to allow some questions to be answered at the beginning of the server installation. This means the user groups and users can be selected from the lists in the workstation or domain depending on prior questions asked.
If user the app user is a member of the Admin Group of the Workstation or Domain. They get extra menu options. That allow them to add or remove members from the DB user group for the workstation or domain. This I find is helpful.
I am now moving to the next stage and looking at hosting my assess app as an SasS (Software as a Service) (Rental). So the app can be use in any HTML5 Browser, Windows or Mac as Virtual Desktop or Android and Apple device. Having said that Access is a bit ugly on mobile devices.
When I am up and running I will make the platform available to others.
I'm having a very confusing error between SharePoint and SQL Server 2k5.
My SQL Server acting as backend to my MOSS farm has several logins in it which correspond to the web front end servers in my farm, with the pattern: {my-domain}{my-machine}$
Now, those accounts do not exist in AD anywhere, despite the login name syntax, and were generated somehow (assume by MOSS, but can't confirm). One (and only one) of the servers is throwing login failures every 2 minutes; that server was the first in the farm and holds most of the services, just not search and indexing.
I did a number of traces in SQL Profiler, and all I can tell is that the failure is a type 16 error on 'master'; so the login exists but doesn't have rights to 'master'.
Having found that, I went back in and gave it progressively greater rights on Master, including db_owner, and eventually making it a sysadmin. Still no joy, same error.
Diggin further w/ tracing, I found that the actual failure was due to the SSO db not existing; probably b/c it wasn't configured in MOSS. When I tried configuring the error, I got a "Sorry, you're not authorized to do that" error in Central Admin, even though I was logged in as the farm admin, who's also a forest-level admin w/ rights to everything I can think of.
Turning off SSO as a windows service worked, but I'm concerned about my inability to configure it in MOSS, so I dont' want to leave that as a solution.
I'm out of ideas, anyone else have thoughts or experience on this?
Thanks
The {my-domain}{my-machine}$ account is an alias for the NETWORK SERVICE built-in local machine account. NETWORK SERVICE is a low privilege predefined account that was introduced in Windows 2003. It has network credentials and can therefore connect to remote databases (as long as they're within the same domain).
It sounds like you've created your SharePoint web applications with the default application pool identity. This will create the logins named {my-domain}{my-machine}$ in SQL Server. So yes, SharePoint created the SQL logins, but they're based on the built-in NETWORK SERVICE machine accounts on the servers in your farm.
I'd check that the account you're using to configure SSO has the rights to create the SSO database. Have a look at the table in Plan for single sign-on. It lists all the privileges required for all the different types of SSO accounts. For the configuration account, the document lists:
SSO configuration account:
Must be a user domain account. Cannot be a group account.
The user account must be a server farm administrator.
Must be a member of the Administrators group on the
encryption-key server computer.
Must be a member of the following SQL Server security roles on the
computer running SQL Server:
Dbcreator
Securityadmin
Must be either the same as the SSO administrator account, or be a member
of the group account that is the SSO
administrator account.
If that doesn't help, follow Alex Angas' advice and post this question to serverfault.com.
Try and follow this to configure SSO:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262932.aspx
We had this same problem - the source of your "Not authorized to do that" message when you configure SSO is that you need to be logged into Sharepoint Central Admin as the SSO user (in our case, it was DOMAIN\SSO_Proxy). This allowed us to make the changes we needed.
Good luck!