Network Management

A network related or instance specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server Errors in the SolarWinds Platform

Errors found on the SolarWinds Platform: The server was not found or was not accessible. provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 28 - Server doesn't support requested protocol)

First published date

9/19/2019 8:10 PM

Last published date

10/16/2025 9:04 PM

Overview

When going through the SolarWinds Configuration Wizard DB server details page, you may get below error after selecting the SQL server IP or hostname.
 

INFO OipClient - Tracking event: ConfigurationWizard - Database Server Scene - DoValidateConfig DatabaseHelper.ValidateConnection 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: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 28 - Server doesn't support requested protocol) - False - 0

ERROR SWEventLogging - Service was unable to open new database connection when requested.
SqlException: 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: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 28 - Server doesn't support requested protocol)


 

Product section

Orion Platform

Cause

  1. TCP/IP was not enabled in SQL server Configuration Manager. 
  2. Wrong SQL server hostname/IP entry in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts 

Resolution

Option 1:
1. Remote into machine that SQL is installed on.
2. Open SQL Server Network Config
3. Open Protocol for MSSQLSERVER2
4. Enabled TCP/IP
5. Rebooted server





Option 2:

- Turn off Windows Firewall
- In the case of Amazon RDS SQL DB, this was the case. Resulting in the Configuration Wizard not proceeding forward when using the RDS SQL server endpoint name. Check if there was a wrong entry in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts, if so, update/remove if not needed.