How to enforce SQL Server policies in order to avoid users enabling bad practices I have some rogue Windows Administrators who give themselves SA and then grant end-users SA.
These users then end up enabling auto-shrink, auto-growth percentage and all kinds of other poor practices - no matter how many times I tell them not to do it, they are still doing it.
Is there a way for me to use SQL Policies to forcefully stop these settings from being enabled? Currently I can only evaluate them and get a notification when the policies are failing.
I assume you are referring to Policies in SQL Server here. Some types/level of policies, you cannot prevent. Technically, to &quot;prevent&quot; something using a policy in SQL Server means that the operation is performed, but the policy engine then does a rollback. Not all operations are rollback-able, hence the prevent functionality doesn't exist for all policy types.
So, in the end, you need to work out who has sysadmin privileges and make sure that only trusted persons has. In the end, this might have to go higher in the organization to get support.