Microsoft SQL has a fixed system administrator role named “sysadmin“.
If a Windows user (credentials) has this role, they have system administrator rights.
The sysadmin role is per SQL instance, not per deployed SQL “server”.
To check whether a user has sysadmin rights to a particular SQL instance, follow these steps (as outlined in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946686).
I will summarize them here with a couple of slight modifications:
- Start SQL Server Management Studio.
- Connect to the SQL Instance.
- Expand the Security node, and then click Logins.
- Find the Windows User and right-click the user’s name, and then click Properties.
- Click the check-boxes to give them these two roles:
- sysadmin
- public