SQL Browser Issues

Question

SQL Browser Issues

Carl Pritchard

Old Hand

Points: 314
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May 3, 2012 at 7:19 am

#260255

We are using SQL server 2008R2 enterprise on W2008R2 in a VMWare infrastructure environment.
At times, snapshots on the VM lead to time resyncs which intern lead to the SQL browser service to stop responding to client requests until it is restarted (we believe the time change is the trigger as it coincides with the browser failure). On the affected server there are 3 instances running, we have another 4 instance server configured basically the same although this does not currently seem to be affected.
I am aware we could (in theory) fix ports on the instances but this causes some issues with third party applications that do not support creating connections using ports instead of instance names.
Any ideas on what is causing SQL Browser to fail and any solution we can put in (other than fixing ports and stopping the browser) for this.

DBA328 Hall of Fame Points: 3952 More actions · Answer 1

Could post Windows event log and SQL Errorl log?

heymiky SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4875 More actions · Answer 2

Setting a static port will not impact you applications ability to use a servername\instance connection string if the SQL browser service is running

Carl Pritchard Old Hand Points: 314 More actions · Answer 3

Since this has now happened outside of time changes in the OS we have identified the following errors we are seeing logged:

The SQLBrowser service was unable to process a client request (Event ID 8)

We have since seen this occur without definite time changs and also get this error:

The SQLBrowser processing of requests against a particular IP address has encountered a critical error. Processing of requests on this address has been halted (event ID 14)

This corresponds to KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2526552

So we are looking to apply the CU for this and see if this improves things

DBA328 Thanks for you reply

Unfortunately policy prevent me doing this.

The errors above are logged in Windows. Nothing is logged in SQL logs

SQLDBA360 Thanks for your suggestion

Thanks for that. We plan to implement fixed ports + Browser as described. This should at least help some of the applications.

heymiky SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4875 More actions · Answer 4

Please post a reply letting me know how it goes, and good luck!

Carl Pritchard Old Hand Points: 314 More actions · Answer 5

Sorry about late reply - some of the changes had to be delayed due to limitation on changes (we have few maintenance windows) and I wanted to check it really was working.

We did the following

1. applied CU1 (which includes a fix for this type of issue)

2. Fixed ports on certain mission critical applications or those that needed to be accessed through firewall and left browser to handle the rest.

This has now been working faultlessly on 2 servers (10 instances) for a month.

Thanks for you help