Openrowset: Error from one server out of twenty

SQL Server Administration
1

I have about twenty servers that I'm trying to use Openrowset against. It works fine except for one server which throws this connection timeout message:

OLE DB provider "SQLNCLI10" for linked server "(null)" returned message "Login timeout expired".
OLE DB provider "SQLNCLI10" for linked server "(null)" returned message "A network-related or instance-specific error has occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. Server is not found or not accessible. Check if instance name is correct and if SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. For more information see SQL Server Books Online.".
Msg 10060, Level 16, State 1, Line 0
TCP Provider: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.

The code and connection information (SQL User/Pswd) are identical except for the server name. The connection information works fine when used from SSMS or any other application. The 'Ad Hoc Distributed Queries' is set properly. In theory, all of the servers are configured the same (It's a great theory...). These are all production servers that have been under the same workload (same applications on each server) for a number of years so I don't find any gross misconfiguration is at fault here.
Any thoughts on what setting(s) could be out of sync?
Many thanks...

2

Try servername,portnumber for that particular server. I would bet that if you RDP'd to the server where you are running a query and tried to connect to the remote server from SSMS that it would throw the same/similar error.

If servername,portnumber doesn't work, test the port via telnet while RDP'd into the server where you are running the query.

3

Sweeeeeeeettt!
I tried the port number and that seems to have resolved it though I'm still not sure why. In any event, thanks for your help here and for all you do at the site.

1 Like
4

Might be a SQL Browser issue on that server. I seem to remember that it could be a Kerberos/SPN issue too.

5

I was trying to remove all of the Kerberos/SPN issues by using a SQL login instead of a Windows login. Also, while most of the servers can now issue the OPENROWSET and be the target of the request, there is still one combination of servers that is causing me problems. If I prepend the "tcp:" to the server name, all is well. I have checked both servers and SQL is configured for tcp only so I'm confused as to why telling to use the only known option has any impact at all.