Wednesday, March 7, 2012

EM Issue - Missing servers in available servers list?

My PC was renamed and added to Active Directory in a new domain yesterday. Today when I tried to register a server in EM I only see SQL Servers in this new domain and not in the other, trusted, domains. I visited the machines of 5 developers and found that some people are experiencing the same issue while others can see SQL Servers in other domains, however they can only see SQL 2000 and not SQL 7 servers.

Any idea how the "Available Server" list is populate in EM and what might be causing this issue? It is important to note that even though I do not see server in the list, I can still register the servers without a problem.

Thanks, DaveThe entries are stored in the client registry, as you might have assumed:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tools\Client\PrefServers|||...well, that's one of the places :)

I found another one:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tools\SQLEW\Registered Servers|||Dave
I assume you are talking about the list of available servers in the register server wizard in Enterprise Manager? If so, then there is actually a security alert about this (lastest SQL Server cummulative patch).

Your client broadcasts out a message to all of your (sub)network, and says I"I am looking for SQL Servers". Anything listening on port 1433 or so will respond with "Hey, I am a SQL Server". The vulnerability is in the way the client accepts the response. If someone "fakes" a response from SQL Server, they can do something to you (I forget the details, but you can look it up on the SQL site under downloads). But that is the short of how the register server wizard works. That is also why I never use it. If I don't know about the server, I probably shouldn't be messing with it. Hope this helps.

rdjabarov has pointed out where you get the lists of servers already registered in SQL Server Enterprise Manager and where Query Analizer and Profiler get that drop-down list of servers to connect to. Basically just the last 20 servers you visited.|||well, my first posting shows the currently used location, and my second posting shows the location on my other workstation. Both locations are sources for EM, not Profiler or QA. The latter 2 truely are using the last 20 servers you connected to.|||Thanks for the info about the security issue. I'll read about it.

The only reason why I like to see the list of servers is to ensure nobody is trying to add an unauthorized SQL Server to our network. There are probably other ways to verify this, but I'm just use to using EM.

Dave

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