This posting originally appeared on my Live Spaces site.
We received a MOM alert in our NOC back in April stating that the sa account had become locked out on a client’s SQL server. I had never seen an instance of the sa account becoming locked out previously. This particular server was running SQL Server 2005, the latest version of Microsoft’s database software. After some quick research on the Internet, I discovered that SQL Server 2005 allows local and domain lockout policies to be enforced against SQL Server accounts. The account can be unlocked by running the following query:
ALTER LOGIN sa WITH PASSWORD = ‘your_password_here‘ UNLOCK
The lockout functionality can be permanently disabled by navigating to Security > Logins > sa > Properties in SQL Server Management Studio. Uncheck the Enforce password policy option.
Posted by Jim Doyle 
