System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Issues with SQL Connection

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked if I could touch base on System Center Configuration Manager 2012 and do a video series. At first, I was like that’s too much work but I needed a good challenge. I fired up my Mac Pro with Parallels [yes, you read it correctly] and started to create my virtual machines to do the installation and configuration video for you guys. For my SQL database version, I decided to install the latest version and that’s SQL 2014. Didn’t bother reading whether it was supported or not with System Center Configuration Manager 2012. The installation part was half-way done, when I got to the point to configure the SQL database for SCCM 2012. It gave me a nasty warning:

Did some research and it seems that SCCM 2012 doesn’t’ support SQL 2014 as of yet. Well, it does but not if you just did a fresh installation of SQL 2014. If you have SQL 2008 R2 and decided to upgrade your SQL to SQL 2014 installing SCCM 2012 will be able to use your current database. I started to un-install SQL server 2014 from the Virtual Machine to install Microsoft SQL Server 2008 SP2 with Cumulative Update 9, which is supported for SCCM 2012.

Another issue that came up was the SCCM setup wasn’t able to connect to SQL Server. The information provided was entered correctly. So what’s the deal?

My SQL Server and instance names were entered correctly; the firewall was enabled on the SQL Server to accept traffic and the account used to run the setup had permission to connect to the SQL Server instance. One message confused me and it was a first for me to see and it stated “The specified SQL Server instance is not configured to use dynamic ports”. I did some research and found a solution within Microsoft TechNet articles.

Here is the fix for the connection issue between SCCM setup and your database:

Step 1: Locate and open your SQL Server Configuration Manager

Step 2: Located “SQL Server Network Configuration” expand it and get into your database protocol. Once you are there located TCP/IP protocol and right-click and click on “Properties”

Step 3: When the properties dialog box shows up get into the “IP Addresses” tab and scroll all down to the IPAII section

Step 4: Delete TCP Dynamic Ports entry and make it blank then for the TCP Port enter 1433, which is the standard port connection for SQL servers

Step 5: When you apply the changes you will have to restart the services to compete the changes.