Brian Kelley

Brian Kelley is an author, columnist, and Microsoft SQL Server MVP focusing primarily on SQL Server security. He is a contributing author for How to Cheat at Securing SQL Server 2005 (Syngress), Professional SQL Server 2008 Administration (Wrox), and Introduction to SQL Server (Texas Publishing). Brian currently serves as an infrastructure and security architect. He has also served as a senior Microsoft SQL Server DBA, database architect, developer, and incident response team lead.
  • Interests: Chess, Reading, Soccer (Football), Baseball, Animals, Theology

Blogs

Advice I Like: Knots

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Learn how to tie a bowline knot. Practice in the dark. With one hand....

Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency

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As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...

March 2026 SQL Server Security Updates

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On Patch Tuesday, in addition to OS and Office security patches, Microsoft also released...

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Forums

Multiple Deployment Processes

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Deployment Processes

How to Use sqlpackage to Detect Schema Drift Between Azure SQL Databases

By Kunal Rathi

Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Use sqlpackage to...

Upgrading Admin Queries

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Upgrading Admin Queries

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Question of the Day

Upgrading Admin Queries

I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?  

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