Registered Server Shows Stopped But is Available

  • In SSMS, I have one server that shows stopped but I can connect to it. It is a SQL 2008 R2 server. It is a named instance, but the port was manually set to 1433 so it could be resolved by hostname instead of hostname\instance.

    I have tried enabling the browser but it doesn't seem to have any effect.

    Can someone explain why this could be happening?

  • This is normally just a connection issue. When I have seen this in the past it was because I was connected to the instance in SSMS and that instance was restarted (either for maintenance or some other reason). If you disconnect and re-connect to the instance do you see it as running then?

    [font="Courier New"]Michael Connolly
    [/font]

  • Yeah I thought it might be something along those lines so I shut down SSMS and re-opened it. I was able to watch it poll each registered server and they all went green except for this one which went red.

    It must have something to do with the fact that I took a named instance and manually set it to 1433 but I can't figure out why it's happening. It's not really a major issue since we definitely have connectivity to the server instance, but it's more of a curiosity / annoyance thing that I'd just like to figure out the answer to if possible.

    I can screen cap my TCP configuration for that server instance if that will help. Just let me know.

  • You mentioned that the browser service is running on the server where the instance is located? When you log into that server and open SSMS do you see the same problem locally or just from your SSMS client outside the server?

    [font="Courier New"]Michael Connolly
    [/font]

  • Yeah same, but I noticed if I fully qualify the instance name it will go green.

    So fully qualified shows green and if I just put the hostname it shows red but it will still connect with the port being set to 1433.

  • Yea, the browser service is not even referenced when you use the default port number so it sounds like this is just a case where the port number that you are using is not "expected" to be associated with a named instance. Annoying but as you said, more of an inconvenience than a problem, unless of course the instance does actually go down but hopefully you have decent monitoring in place to catch that.

    [font="Courier New"]Michael Connolly
    [/font]

  • I did see a post online that was related to a similar problem, not exactly the same but similar related to the instance status not showing green. That person disabled the windows firewall and that resolved the problem. Not sure if you have this enabled or not but if you do it might be worth a shot.

    [font="Courier New"]Michael Connolly
    [/font]

  • Firewall is disabled so I don't think that is a factor.

    Thank you for your assistance.

    John

  • Your welcome John, I have not seen this as it related to a named instance using the default port number before so this is new to me too. Let me know if you find a resolution to it.

    Good luck

    Mike

    [font="Courier New"]Michael Connolly
    [/font]

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