Comments on: Configure a SQL Server Alias for Sharepoint (SQL Server 2008)

By: BBWI

BBWI — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:16:06 +0000

all I did was create a CNAME record and pointed SharePoint to that. Why do I have to go through these steps?

By: ujludwig

ujludwig — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 02:49:29 +0000

This is a great question and really gets to the point of the SQL Alias… I think a lot of people miss the concept or meaning of the word. With that said, here’s what I would do in your situation.

(Test this in a Lab for Staging server first please )
1) Leave your farm as is (temporarily)
2) Create a SQL Alias in your CURRENT farm pointing to your CURRENT SQL Server + Database + Instance
3) Use the “stsadm -o setconfigdb -databaseserver alias” command to point the farm to the config database via the alias
4) Detach and reattach your contend databases using “stsadm -o addcontentdb” command
5) Move the databases to the new server (take care to create the logins and re-attache them)
6) Try pointing your your farm to the new SQL Server by simply changing the pointer of the alias (no changes in SharePoint needed for this step)

By: Donald Harman

Donald Harman — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 02:35:18 +0000

Hi there I have no SQL alias set up. I have the following problem.
I have a SharePoint server 2010 with the WFE and SQL Server on the same box.

I wish to set up a NEW SQL box and move all the Databases accross to the NEW SQL .

The Current SQL instance is \SQL Instance

will remain as thr WFE and is appropriately named.

I hope to call the NEW SQL something to suit inftrastructures naming convention SQL03. Do I move all the DBs and just point to this NEW server as being the Current Farm?

By: Wahid Saleemi

Wahid Saleemi — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 06:08:03 +0000

You can do this via PowerShell as well:

New-ItemProperty HKLM:SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\Client\ConnectTo -name SPSQL -propertytype String -value “DBMSSOCN,DatabaseServer,1433″

New-ItemProperty HKLM:SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\Client\ConnectTo -name SPSQL -propertytype String -value “DBMSSOCN,DatabaseServer,1433″

By: Linda

Linda — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 00:06:02 +0000

We have had a SQL Alias in place for 3 years now, and my customer wants to get rid of the SQL Alias, as they don’t like seeing the old serve name in SharePoint and we have had one third party reporting product that it didn’t work on.

By: ujludwig

ujludwig — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 18:32:21 +0000

I’m not sure what your question is, do you want the alias or do you not want the alias? As you could have guessed, the alias is very useful for migrating from one physical sql server to another because you can simply kill the old server and replace it with an alias (assuming you remove it from DNS properly), however, that old name may confuse users in central admin since it references what looks to be a servername. All in all, once you have the alias in place you want to keep it… why wouldn’t you as it allows you to point to a new SQL instance with no effort which is especially useful for SQL upgrade or SQL disaster scenarios.

By: Linda

Linda — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 18:23:37 +0000

We had to do this when we migrated from a 32bit named instance to a new 64bit server default instance.

Do you know is there any way to migrate away from having to have these SQL Alias’ forever?

By: SharePoint 2010 Installation Part 2 – Install SQL | Ulysses Ludwig's SharePoint blog

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:40:34 +0000

[...] that I have a more detailed article about how to create a SQL Alias on a server with no SQL Client tools [...]