SQL Requirements for SoftGrid

The SoftGrid Team Blog — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 01:10:28 GMT

A week or so ago I talked about how MSDE (Microsoft SQL Desktop Engine) or SQL Express should not be

re: SQL 2005 Server Installation

Donato Barragan — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 02:04:27 GMT

do you has installed Softgrid on SQL cluster environment (active-passive)??. i´ve a problem with this case. (its same for SQL 2000 or SQL 2005 Cluster, x32 or x64 bits), Regards.

re: SQL 2005 Server Installation

Justin Zarb — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 07:40:44 GMT

Hey Donato,

So I have seen some customers receives the following error message when installing a VAS server which is attempting to create a SQL database on a Microsoft 2003 R2 SP2 Cluster with SQL 2005 which has multiple database instances.

The installation program encountered an error when attempting to execute a database statement. The specified @server_name ("SERVERNAME\INSTANCE04) does not exist.

This issue which the workable and probably fastest way to resolve is to install the VAS to a stand- alone SQL server and then migrate the database that is created on the Stand-alone server over to the SQL Cluster. Once the database is up and running it will work on the SQL Cluster. Use the following KB article and follow it to the letter to migrate the database.

932136 How to migrate the Microsoft SoftGrid database from one computer that is running Microsoft SQL Server to another computer that is running SQL Server

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;932136

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More information found on an internet blog regarding this issue:

http://nimtug.org/blogs/simon/archive/2007/08/03/installing-softgrid-database-on-a-sql-server-named-instance-when-there-is-also-a-default-instance-done.aspx

Contents of the blog link above - provided purely for additional information:

There is a known problem with the SoftGrid installation program that it can not deal with installing the database on to SQL Server when there is a named instance as well as a default instance installed on the server.

IMHO there are a number of down falls with the installation program

During the installation of SoftGrid you are asked to select the SQL Server and select a port number (I've never really bothered about port numbers and I've been around SQL Server since 6.5 days). In the environment that we were trying to install SoftGrid data to is one box with a SQL Server 2000 installed as the default instance (so this runs as the default port number) and SQL Server 2005 runnning as a named instance which is where we want to install SoftGrid. The SQL 2005 service runs on a port number taken from a pool of dynamic port numbers so without messing around with the service configuration there is no way I can really know what port number SQL is currently running under. The convension is that if you set the port number to 0 then it should tell the client that it needs to find the dynamic port number , but this didn't work. Blanking out the port number seems to tell the client tool to try to connect using NamedPipes rather than TCP/IP.

The SoftGrid installtion program, I believe, then tries to connect to the server using windows authentication which fails and prompts the user user for a SQL login. According to collegues that have run mutiple installs, it always prompts for the user.We finally got it working by installing the SQL Server 2005 client connectivity

tools on the SoftGrid server and then using the client tools create an alias which points to the named instance we want to installl to. This acts as a proxy so it fools the SoftGrid install in thinking that it standard single instance SQL Server. The Server even appears in the list of available server to connect to. (It still prompts for a SQL login in though)

Sorry if this is a bit long winded but let me know if this fixes the issue that you have? Also If this does not, could you tell me the "exact" error message that you recieve! :o)

Cheers

Justin