Linked Server - Security Issue?

[ABerkowicz]

Hi - Looking at linked servers and am wondering if there are any problems or security risks with having servers linked to other servers.

This sounds like it will help ease our pain with querying different databases easily - Our SQL logins are not always the same across dbases so I will have to make connection by using a specific login and password when I set up the linked server.

So, this seems too good to be true? Should I be worried about anything that you can think of?

Thanks,
Angela

 

[TJRTech]

We use them all the time in our systems, and haven't run across any real issues.

One thing to consider, however, is that since the linked server is a remote resource it may not be available all the time, even though the server you are accessing it from is okay. This means extra error handling, and since trying to access a linked server that is down is a fatal error, you often need to assure that the linked server is available before accessing it if you want to avoid such an error (handle gracefully).

TR