I wrote an editorial asking about things that needed to be done to improve replication. There are plenty of things that need help, but as I was testing some replication, I got this the other day.
I am trying to setup a secure home network (other than the same password for a few services to make life easier). I have firewalls running and open specific ports for SQL Server. In this case, I have multiple instances on this machine, so I opened a port for a named instance. I didn’t want the SQL Browser running, and connected with the port.
These are all valid connections for the server:
- Atlas,51433
- Atlas\SQL2016,51433
- Atlas.home.xxx.net,51433
- Atlas\SQL2016
- 192.168.1.201, 51433
- 192.168.1.201\SQL2016, 51433
Guess which ones work? Only the name/instance.
Perhaps I’m doing something wrong, or there’s a setting, but this is a bit silly that valid connection strings with ports don’t seem to work with replication.
Especially after seeing this: