SQL Server Q&A

Symptoms
Consider the following scenario:You have a database mirroring session in Microsoft SQL Server 2005. The database mirroring session does not have a witness. You set up a witness server. On the principal server and on the witness server, you do not use DNS together with DHCP for name resolution. Instead, you specify that a host file should be used for name resolution. On the principal server instance, you try to set the witness.In this scenario, you receive the following error message:

Msg 1456, Level 16, State 3, Line 1
The ALTER DATABASE command could not be sent to the remote server instance ‘TCP://ServerName:port’. The database mirroring configuration was not changed. Verify that the server is connected, and try again.
Resolution
A database mirroring session must use a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) to resolve the name of the witness server.

Symptoms
Consider the following scenario:You have a database mirroring session in Microsoft SQL Server 2005. The database mirroring session does not have a witness. You set up a witness server. On the principal server and on the witness server, you do not use DNS together with DHCP for name resolution. Instead, you specify that a host file should be used for name resolution. On the principal server instance, you try to set the witness.In this scenario, you receive the following error message:

Msg 1456, Level 16, State 3, Line 1
The ALTER DATABASE command could not be sent to the remote server instance ‘TCP://ServerName:port’. The database mirroring configuration was not changed. Verify that the server is connected, and try again.
Resolution
A database mirroring session must use a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) to resolve the name of the witness server.