2011 CME Database Connection Issue

Question

OK we have recently migrated a client DEV machine from the our internal domain to the clients domain and the Tridion instance needed some re-configuration (to be expected) however I have now got the CME up and running however no structure groups will load underneath the publications and none of the administrator options will load either. The CME reports the following errors:

[DBNETLIB][ConnectionOpen (Invalid Instance()).]Invalid connection. Unable to get TOM object for URI: cme:custompgs

and

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 - Could not open a connection to SQL Server)

Now I know what your thinking. It's that the CM is looking for a SQL server that doesn't exist. Well I have checked all of the Tridion directories and configurations and not a single reference is showing for a SQL server that isn't on this network and that the users don't have access to. So I have checked this but thought it might be something to do with the fact I need to rebuild the indexes.

However when running the TCM Re-index tool I get the same issue

Unable to execute method ReIndexAllPublications [DBNETLIB][ConnectionOpen (Invalid Instance()).]Invalid connection. Unable to get TOM object for URI: cme:custompgs

Does anyone have any idea what this could be or a config file that I am missing somewhere. Again I have configured everything through the Tridion Management Console and the Storage Configs and The content manager config is correct and I cannot find a single config reference to a Database Server from the BB domain so I am completely lost as to where this mystery SQL server connection is stored.

Any help will be much appreciated at this time as I am stuck right now.

Update 19-03-2015

Looks like one of the exceptions was to do with a custom page but the main SQL exception is still an issue. I will take a look at the suggestion below and feedback if they resolve the issue.

Answer 1

It looks like your SQL Server isn't accepting connections as the error says:

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 - Could not open a connection to SQL Server)

Tridion wraps its own error around this, but the root cause is a generic SQL Server issue, which is not Tridion specific. So search the net for answers around the generic error.

For example, the first Google search result points to this blog: http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/05/21/sql-server-fix-error-provider-named-pipes-provider-error-40-could-not-open-a-connection-to-sql-server-microsoft-sql-server-error/.

Here is another Q&A related to the same issue: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17029073/cannot-connect-to-sql-server-named-instance-from-another-sql-server

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

It's SQL server misconfiguration. Check that named pipes are enabled and all other settings are as per documentation. Also check Local DTC security both on SQL server and Tridion machine:

Answer 3

-Have you a Firewall between CMS and DB? (for example windows Firewall)

-Can you do telnet from CMS to DB for database instance port (default 1433) and viceversa?

Hope this helps!