March | 2010 | Michael Ellerbeck

Can’t connect remotely to sql server 2008

Posted on March 31, 2010 by mellerbeck

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/sqldataaccess/thread/ec77d275-99c7-4cc0-b60d-707bde6f8c67

III. Troubleshooting Tips:

Assumption: your SQL Server was installed on remote server and behind firewall; SQL Instance was started; and your client app specify correct remote sql instance name.

On your server side:

[2] Sql Instance was restarted successfully, check Server ErrorLog, find which tcp port or pipe name server is listening on.

[3] netstate -ano | findstr <portnumber> if server enable TCP, and make sure server is listening on the correct port.

[4] go to services.msc, find service “SQL Server Browser”, enable it and restarted, also, go to SQL Server Configuration Manager, check properties for SQL Browser service, in Advanced tab, make sure it is active.

[5] Enable “Fire and Printer Sharing” in Firewall exception list.

Devil Add TCP port or sqlservr.exe to Firewall exception list, either add “..\Binn\sqlsevr.exe” or add port.

If your server was not started successfully by any reason, it is very helpful to collect info from server logs; also, you can get clear picture of protocols that server is listening on, for eg, if TCP was enabled, you should be able to see which port server is listening on, and if Np was enabled, you can make connection throgh the pipe name.

[7] Add Sql Browser service to Firewall exception list, you can either add program ” C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared\sqlbrowser.exe” or add UDP port 1434.

Make sure if your remote sql Server Instance is a default instance, it must listen on tcp port 1433 and pipe \\.\pipe\sql\query.

EqualLogic Replication

Posted on March 31, 2010 by mellerbeck

So in my eternal quest for DR goodness these are my initial stats so far.

I have been testing our four most heavy hit servers. (These have not been really optimized for replication, need to figure out how to lower the changed bits)

For the last 11 hours

Kronos SQL DB server 9930 MB

Exchange 2003 19026 MB

File Server 12398 MB

ERP SQL DB server 6210 MB

Total: 47,564 MB

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

EqualLogic feature request, veeam as well

Posted on March 29, 2010 by mellerbeck

I have been investigating using veeam for backups of our Virtual Machines. It can do a direct SAN backup which is pretty cool, but it makes me nervous that you have to give read\write access to the volumes that it talks to (When you are using equalLogic, Veeam only needs read). I would like it if the EqualLogic could have different ACL’s for the different initiators. (You can do this at the volume level but not the initiator as far as I can tell)

So, for example my ESX servers would all have read write to the shared volume. And my veeam server would only have read access to the shared volume.

Of course my feature request for veeam now is to quiesce the VM, sql\exchnage VSS ect… and then trigger the EqualLogic snapshot, and backup from it instead! That would be cool!

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

VMware, Kronos, and EqualLogic creating a Test\Dev environment is utter bliss!

Posted on March 23, 2010 by mellerbeck

Using the term synergy is blasphemous and often down right nauseating, but in rare cases you can combine great technology together and something beautiful happens.

This is truly the case when one needs to make a test\dev environment using EqualLogic, VMware, and Kronos. What normally would have taken a full two days (building a test Kronos server from scratch). With a VMware snapshot would take two hours. And then finally with an EqualLogic snapshot utilizing the amazing ASM\VE http://www.equallogic.com/partnerships/default.aspx?id=6523

It takes 20 minutes….

Nice

To learn more you can download the whitepaper I authored here (On the righthand side, VMWare & Kronos Dev/Test Environment Bliss!) http://www.improvizations.com/kronosblog/

(This technique could also be used to create any type of testing test dev\environment)

Filed under: equallogic, kronos, vmware | Leave a comment »

Hurting you VM performance using SCP (or fast SCP)

Posted on March 22, 2010 by mellerbeck

I never knew this:

Using SCP/CP to place the VMDK on the VMFS volume can cause poor disk performance for the VM, vmfkstools properly allocates the space to prevent this.

***

vmkfstools allocates all space at once and then copies the data, a “normal” copy (cp, scp, …) allocates the space while copying.
This behavior can lead to VMDK fragmentation and therefore to poor disk performance.

***

Fascinating

From here http://communities.vmware.com/message/704200

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Notes to self

Posted on March 16, 2010 by mellerbeck

When processing XMLreader don’t forget to handle whitespace datatype. Also, when binary searching arrayList don’t forget to sort first… duh

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Clearest Paragraph I have read yet on configuring STP for EqualLogic

Posted on March 16, 2010 by mellerbeck

From this guide

http://www.equallogic.com/resourcecenter/assetview.aspx?id=9259

4.2.3 Pay Attention to Spanning Tree
In our test configurations we disabled Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) on all switch ports connecting to
end devices (the server and storage controller NICs). We also enabled the “portfast” setting on those
switch ports.
Since NIC and storage controller ports are end points they cannot create loops. Thus you should
enable the ‘portfast’ setting on those switch ports instead. With port fast enabled you eliminate the STP
forwarding state delay time that occurs when a port becomes active. This will accelerate initialization
of new iSCSI sessions if ports on an existing iSCSI connection path change status. This becomes very
important in larger SAN fabric configurations with multiple hops.

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Michael Ellerbeck

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