Error When starting Windows SharePoint Search service

Last week I got stuck with few errors when starting WSS Search Service. Below are few errors that were thrown:



Error1:
Event ID: 10036
A database error occurred.
Source: Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server
Code: 6 occurred 1 time(s)
Description: [DBNETLIB][ConnectionOpen (Connect()).]Specified SQL server not found.

Error2:
Error Description: Could not access the Search service configuration database.


Few tips to avoid this kind of error:

• Make sure the search service account has got DBCreator role on DB server. You can remove this role once the service is started.


• Offcourse your normal Farm Admin service account also needs DbCreator and SecurityAdmin role.


• I have read someone saying to use Named Pipes for remote connection. But this is not true it should work with TCP/IP connection as well. So in your SQL server make sure that your remote connection is enabled for either TCP/IP or Named Pipes or for both.


• Make sure the DB Server name in your connection string is consistent in your farm for all other webapps, admin content config database etc etc..


• Finally the solution that worked for me was that I was using "DB server name\Instance, port" as the connection string and this format of connection string uses Named Pipes. Unfortunately Named Pipes was disabled so I have to use an Alias of the DB server to use the TCP/IP connection. Also once the alias is setup for you by the DBA's you have to set it up on the MOSS server under SQL Server Client Configuration settings. You can also use server name if you are using default instance for TCP/IP.

I hope that makes sense. If anybody has any more suggestions or corrections to my suggestions then please do leave a comment.

Cheers,

Kunal