Symptoms

OA tasks to provision Windows services like Hosted Exchange or SharePoint through the WPE (Windows Provisioning Engine) fail with the error message 'A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server'.

More detailed error message looks like this:

Provisioning request failed. 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)
Type: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException.

Cause

WPE is using MS SQL Server database to store internal data. The reason of the problem is that WPE cannot connect to the MS SQL database which is configured in properties of the POA package WindowsProvisioningEngine installed on the WPE host.

The problem may be caused by network connectivity troubles or MS SQL server being down.

Resolution

Solve the problem with connection from the WPE server to the MS SQL Server where WPE database is located:

  1. Log into OA Provider Control Panel.

  2. Go to Deployment Director > Server Manager > Hardware Nodes in OA 5.4 or Infrastructure > Hardware Nodes in OA 5.5.

  3. Click on the WPE host.

  4. Switch to the Packages tab.

  5. Click the icon right to the WindowsProvisioningEngine package.

  6. Switch to the Package properties tab.

  7. Find the MS SQL Server hostname in the wpe.sql.servername parameter.

  8. Make sure that MS SQL Server is up and running on the discovered host and the WPE database is mounted.

  9. Make sure that the Named Pipes protocol is enabled in MS SQL Server, use the SQL Server Configuration Manager to check.

  10. Make sure that ports 1433, 1434 are open in firewall for connections from the WPE server to the MS SQL Server.

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