Using the MDT database: “ZTI error opening SQL Connection. SQL server does not exist or access denied”

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Kees Baggerman·Senior Technical Director at Nutanix – Former Citrix CTP – NVIDIA Enterprise Platform Advisor – 15+ years in EUC

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For one of my current projects we’re using MDT 2012 Update 1 and we configured the MDT DB using the database wizard as we’re using the MDT database as source for our deployment. It holds host name and IP configuration of the target machines (as we can remove the need to press F12 for PXE with the use of RES Automation Manager 2012 we have a great ZTI solution).

But we ran into a problem when using the database as the targets would use the DB information so they were deployed using the automatically generated hostsnames and based on DHCP. So when looking into the results in the C:\Windows\Temp folder we discovered that we got an error:

ZTI error opening SQL Connection. SQL server does not exist or access denied.

Unable to establish database connection using [CSETTINGS] properties. SQL Server does not exist or access denied.

Unable to establish database connection using [CROLES] properties. SQL Server does not exist or access denied.

Which resulted in the following deployment summary:

source: D-Spot.org

And so we started to troubleshoot:

1) Turn of the Windows Firewall on the SQL server (although we already created a inbound rule on the fw that was working).

2) Created an SQL account instead of Windows Auth.

3) Used a simplified password

This didn’t solve the problem until one of the sys admins had a Eureka!-moment, we configured the database based on Named Pipes and that uses Integrated security, as I was adding a DBID and DBPWD in my CustomSettings.ini this clearly would provide some problems. After removing the DBID and DBPWD the deployment went like we would expect and all data from the MDT DB was applied.

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Kees Baggerman

Kees Baggerman is Senior Technical Director — Performance & Solutions Engineering R&D at Nutanix, where he leads a global team responsible for defining how enterprise applications are delivered on the Nutanix platform. A former Citrix Technology Professional and NVIDIA Enterprise Platform Advisor, he has spent 15+ years driving EUC strategy and technical direction across architecture, product, and customer success. He has been writing here since 2011 — sharing what he learns at the intersection of platform engineering and enterprise IT.

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Kees Baggerman

Senior Technical Director at Nutanix - Former Citrix CTP - NVIDIA Enterprise Platform Advisor - 15+ years in EUC

Kees Baggerman is Senior Technical Director — Performance & Solutions Engineering R&D at Nutanix, where he leads a global team responsible for defining how enterprise applications are delivered on the Nutanix platform. A former Citrix Technology Professional and NVIDIA Enterprise Platform Advisor, he has spent 15+ years driving EUC strategy and technical direction across architecture, product, and customer success. He has been writing here since 2011 — sharing what he learns at the intersection of platform engineering and enterprise IT.

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