Remote access Sql Server 2005 Enterprise with VMWare
Sep 19 2008 - By George Webster
I just had one headache after another trying to get this setup. The basics were simple. I got VMWare fusion installed. Installed Windows Server 2003 Enterprise. Added the IIS service. Sat through the insanely long updating process for service pack 2 through the windows update. Installed SQL Server 2005 Enterprise. Mounted all my databases. Successfully connected through the Management Studio. Okay now its up and running and i'm thinking this is great!
Well not exacally, it seems everything i try to connect to the VMWare machine from my host computer ends in something like this:
Sqlcmd: Error: Microsoft SQL Native Client: An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections.
Well this is not good to say the least!
I googled around a bit and found a couple of quality posts
codeproject and of course microsoft.
I followed both to the "t" but to no avail. I checked the tcp listening port through the client services manager and it swore up and down it was listening on port 1433. I even tried assigning an alias forcing to listen to port 1433 but once again to no avail.
Finally here another microsoft support page i found this little nugget of goodness:
Open a local connection and create a new query with the following:
Use master Go Xp_readerrorlog
About halfway down the results listing it says its listening on port 1138! What! i didn't argue, and i pointed my host machine to 1138 and finally success.
It seems odd that everything else would indicate port 1433 as it is the default for EVERY CLIENT.