SQL on Windows 2008 Server Remote Connection Issue

August 24th, 2009 by admin | Filed under Database.

I just brought up a new Windows 2008 server and installed SQL Server 2005 (I know… should have loaded 2008).

After my new SQL Server was up and running… I tried to connect remotely to the SQL Server.

Error…

Oh yeah… I remember… The good ole’ Surface Area Configuration tool.

Applied my change, and restarted SQL.

Remote connections still would not connect.

Hum… Ah… Must be Firewall…

In case you have not seen the Windows 2008 Firewall settings… it’s kinda intimidating

I found this DOS command to run on the server that corrected my connection issue. I hope it saves you some time if you encounter this in the future…

netsh firewall set portopening TCP 1433 "SQLServer"

That fixed me right up.

(I found the answer on ServerFault.com)

pablo | 8/01/10
The firewall in windows server 2008 is scary. Not to mention that they removed the functionality to transfer data from one external port to an internal one. For example, for SMTP, receive on external port 587 (for the clients to work properly) and then transfer the request to internal port 25 (so the mail server can process it).

Sorry if I went off-topic, but I am bitter about that, I had to downgrade to win server 2003 just because of that.