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From the documentation: Determining Effective Database Engine Permissions

SQL Server administrators can see information about all logins and users. Less privileged users usually see information about only their own identities.

What is the permission that makes the user a SQL Server administrator as per the above quote?

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Membership in the server role named sysadmin confers all rights to the SQL Server instance.

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  • For SQL Server Logins, both native and Windows-authenticated, you could possibly live with the SQL Server Role securityadmin. But you are right that sysadmin is the SQL Server administrators mentioned in the question.
    – John K. N.
    Commented Sep 1, 2021 at 13:01
  • A member of the securityadmin role and/or a member of local windows administrator group can elevate their privileges to sysadmin role. Reference: learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/security/…. But I think for the purpose of this question/answer, we can conclude that anyone with sysadmin is the SQL server administrator.
    – variable
    Commented Sep 1, 2021 at 13:04
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    For the sake of this question, I would add the CONTROL SERVER permission as also being equivalent to "a SQL Server administrator." The are some differences between CONTROL SERVER and sysadmin, though. So it's not fully the same
    – AMtwo
    Commented Sep 1, 2021 at 13:34
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    That difference being the ability to DENY to somebody who has CONTROL SERVER, right? Where SQL Server doesn't even check for DENY for a sysadmin. In this case, that difference doesn't apply since the securityadmin create its own login (and obviously won't DENY the actions that it wants to maliciously perform). Or were you thinking of some other difference between sysadmin and CONTROL SERVER?
    – Tibor Karaszi
    Commented Sep 1, 2021 at 15:32
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    @Tibor obeying DENY, plus depending on version, there is a small set of things that still had hard coded checks for sysadmin. I seem to recall that they had chipped away at the last of them (or the last of the ones I cared about) by now. But they were relatively obscure bits from the prior century. I'll be damned if I can actually remember any details anymore.
    – AMtwo
    Commented Sep 1, 2021 at 18:28

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