Tuesday, December 13, 2011

SQL Server Alias for x64 Systems

Found a weird quirk with SQL aliases today. We were trying to create an alias for our SCCM DB to ease some migration stuff we're working on plus as a best practice going forward. Turns out that if you're running a 64bit the clconfg.exe utility must have the alias in its 32 and 64 bit version.

Start > Run > "cliconfg.exe" does NOT open the SysWOW64 version of the utility by default. However, that is exactly what is required for the DB connection to establish. What was so weird is that it requires both versions. As soon as I removed the 32bit alias my connection would fail (more specifically the SCCM installer to update the SQL settings).

So what I learned was you have to run both of these and put in the same settings for each. This is just the experience I had so I'm open to feedback on the "why" behind it.

C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cliconfg.exe
C:\Windows\System32\cliconfg.exe

Add TCP/IP Alias
  • Server Alias: something like "SCCM-DB" 
  • Server Name: <SQL Server Name>\<Instance> (instance only if applicable) 

REFERENCES
The alias thing was just an oddity we found while trying to accomplish the following (though he wasn't using aliases).

http://blog.rohrauer.at/how-to-move-a-sccm-system-center-configuration-manager-2007-database-to-another-host/


**UPDATE**

I would recommend using DNS aliases for this. Just add a CNAME for the DB. This way if an installer asks for a server you can put in something like above "DB-SCCM". You may still want to use SQL aliases to get it to a specific instance or something. So far just using the DNS CNAME has worked really well for us. Used it for SCCM, WSUS, SharePoint, and SCOM. Makes moving the DB super easy later.

-Shep

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