Accessing Azure SQL Database from Access (without port 1433) - sql

So I'm building a pretty simple application in Access 2013, and our company recommended using Azure SQL Database for the backend (due to the cost and simplicity of setting up/maintenance). However, their recommendation left us with a massive problem. Port 1433 is blocked on our company's network, and it's such a big company, I can't get it unblocked.
I don't know too much about having a middle-tier, but what are my options here? Is there a simple way to connect to the database without accessing this port?
Thanks

You could fire up a Azure VM with SQL Server already installed. Then you should be able to change the ports to your liking.
Check out this post...
http://roberteichenseer.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/nderung-default-port-sql-server-innerhalb-einer-azure-vm/

You only need to open up 1433 outbound in your works firewall not the 1433 inbound.
Most security teams are ok to open the outbound port. Opening the outbound will give you the access to connect and access the data inside Azure.

Related

Cannot connect to RDS SQL Server Database using Management Studio

I created a SQL Server RDS Instance in AWS and it seems to be up and running, but if I try to connect to it using Management Studio I get this error:
Here is the text of the error:
A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - The wait operation timed out.) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 258)
I initially tried with the default security group that was created with the instance, but when that didn't work I created a new security group and modified the instance to use it.
Here you can see the details:
I tried this connection setup to connect:
Server Type: Database Engine
Server Name: valuationdlsdev.ck1qvjqhglyg.us-west-2.rds.amazonaws.com,1433
Authentication: SQL Server Authentication
Login: the Master User Login I created when creating the RDS Instance
Password: the Master User Password I created when creating the RDS Instance
I was kinda at my wits end and so I changed the setting on the Security Group to All traffic just to see if that would work, so here are all the settings on the security group:
At this point I'm wondering if port 1433 is not open, because I feel like I've tried everything. Could someone please help me.
Thanks.
In my case I opened the VPC Security group associated with my database
In the EC2 Security groups dashboard I selected Edit Inbound Rules from the actions dropdown and chose edit inbound rules.
At first, I looked at the inbound rules and thought everything was OK since this was the current setup
After all - if it was allowing all traffic, then what could possibly be wrong?
On a whim I added a rule for TCP port 1433. Ending up with this simple setup
Then it immediately started working for me.
Make sure it is publicly accessible, there is a radio button you have to check to make it publicly accessible.
Also add MS SQL inbound rule in inbound tab.After making the change wait for sometime so that the settings are updated in the instance.
In my experience this was counter-intuitive. With the options I selected, all ports and IPs seemed to be open, but after editing the inbound and outbound rules in the security group to have MS SQL for anywhere, I was able to connect.
For inbound rules, go to the VPC Security group of your database instance
In Inbound tab click modify
In column source change ip 0.0.0.0 by your IP by "My IP" or "Anywhere"
I had the same issue.
I ended up deleting the security group inbound rules, and just added a new inbound rule for port 1433, source being: 0.0.0.0
Image attached.
inbound rules
Thanks for the discussion here. Just post my finding in case anyone needs help in the future.
I initially followed this guide https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_ConnectToMicrosoftSQLServerInstance.html.
then, I got some ideas from this post and figure out my particular issue in the end. https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=845682 The poster really did wonderful troubleshooting steps which could help fix most of the general Error 258 problems already. In the end I used the suggestion from the answerer to find out my problem.
In terms of my case of encountering error 258, I tried to connect to RDS SQL server 2016 inside a secure network from my workplace. When I switched to use the public network served by some Telecomm vendor, the connecting was succeeded.
If you want to access from different network were the instance was created, you'll need to open access to the IP range of where you want to access, by going to the "security group" assigned to your DB instance, and then adding the rule for your IP range.
PD. AWS by default only allow access from the IP range of the machine where you activated "public access" to the instance.
I was also not able to access it from my office laptop, but I was able to access it from my personal laptop. I think it is because of some company firewall rules.
In case anyone comes across this post looking for an answer, I just wanted to updated and make sure it's there if anyone needs it. The issue here turned out to be that I misunderstood the way "Publicly Accessible" works and set it to "Yes". Apparently it should have been set to "No". "Yes", however does work for the SQL Server Express version.

Microsoft Azure VPN WebApp not communicating with external SQL

The problem I have is that we're trying to use our WebApp in Microsoft Azure to connect to an external SQL-database (not our own) through a VPN. The SQL-database is only allowing connections from our local IP-addresses that we put up as a Network (for example 176.0.0.0/24).
We are now connected to the same virtual private network, and through our Azure-VM we can now connect to the SQL-Server through SQL Server Management Studio.
Now we want to do the same with a WebApp, but we're not getting through to the server. It gets "Not authenticated" before reaching the SQL-Server (probably the server isn't accepting our IP from the WebApp).
The different problems I have tried to look through is:
Do we only try to connect through our Outbound IPs?
Is the WebApp not connected to the VPN?
I have unfortunatley not found any real answers, and neither any solutions to my problem. If you have any ideas of how to solve our problem, or maybe know how I could tunnel all of the SQL-calls through the VM, the help would be very much appreciated!
Hybrid connection is one option. What you can also do is enable point-to-site in your VPN. Once you do that, you can directly integrate your web app to the vnet and your connections will work. (Go to your web app -> Settings -> Networking -> VNet Integration)
If your Vnet is V1(older way of creating VNs) then enabling point to site is very straightforward. You can do it through portal. For V2 Vnets you have to do it through powershell commands.
Here is a link for the documentation which explains both the options.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/documentation/articles/web-sites-integrate-with-vnet/
There's a way to "tunnel all of the SQL-calls through the VM". You may want to use hybrid connections (cf https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/integration-hybrid-connection-overview/).
The principle is to have an agent installed on the VM that can access the database with the correct IP address.
Suppose you can access the SQL DB as mysqldbsrv from the VM. You add an hybrid connection associated to your web app, you install the agent on the VM. Then, when you connect to mysqldbsrv from the Web App, you go through the VM.

Cannot establish a connection to SQL Server over VPN using TCP protocol

During my daily work, I need to use the customer's Database. for this connection, first of all, I need to connect the VPN to customer's network, and then make the DB connection.
Normally, if this connection can be established using TCP protocol. But sometimes I cannot connect to the DB. Then I track the network package, I found the connection is attempting connect to customer's DB using UDP protocol.
And now my network environment is using '172.16', if I change my network to '10.12', do the same connection, then change back to the '172.16' network, the connection can be established successfully.
Because the DB is in customer's side, I cannot check it.
The first couple of things I'd look at:
Firewall
... and ...
Firewall
PS:
Yesterday I had a case where the customer's database could communicate by Windows host name or by "localhost" ... but NOT by IP, nor by hostname alias ... even though the client and the SQL Server were ON THE SAME PC!!!!
Windows firewall was OFF. There wasn't any router between SQL server and the client (remember: same PC!).
But they installed a new A/V program ... that had it's own firewall ... and wouldn't allow any SQL Server connections.
PPS:
The correct approach, of course, is to configure firewall exceptions for all services you need (like MSSQL).
You could check with the customer's server administrator if the VPN access you have would have sufficient port/route access with customer's server database.
Normally VPN access allow outsider to gain access to internal network but it might be assigned by different router at the time you encountered problem. It isn't db problem, it is network issue.

connect to SQL hosted on a local machine from my laptop (using an IP)

I set up an SQL server on my Windows 7 PC.
I have a laptop, from which I want to connect to the SQL server (using visual studio 2010).
I need to fill in a "server name" when creating a database connection.
I tried "My.IP.Address/SQLEXPRESS,custom-port", but that doesn't work. All examples talk about using server names which are formatted like so "TOM-PC/SQLEXPRESS", but I have an important requirement:
I want to be able to connect from anywhere (not only when in the same local network), therefore I'm trying to use the IP address (the port isn't simply 1433 since my ISP blocks it).
The custom port is open, and reachable in tests.
I've been Googling this all day long, but can't find a solution. Please help!
Thank you,
Tom
To access from a remote location, you need to setup port forwarding on your router. If you have a static external facing IP address, then you can use that for your server address (123.123.123.123\SQLEXPRESS), otherwise you will need to setup a dynamic DNS service like DynDNS.com that will give your router a hostname.
DynDNS Free allows you to create a
hostname that points to your home or
office IP address, providing an
easy-to-remember URL for quick access.
We also provide an update mechanism
which makes the hostname work with
your dynamic IP address. We continue
to offer this service free to the
Internet community as we have done so
for nearly 10 years.
should it not be My.IP.Address:custom-port/SQLEXPRESS ?
If you are saying that you have a PC at location A that has SQL and you want to be able to access it from anywhere, well, then you're going to need a static IP from your ISP, a firewall with the proper NAT rules. And even then, it'll be a different IP when you're local (within the same network) than it is when you are at the local coffee shop.
My suggestion would be to use the local server reference and install SQL on your laptop. If you publish your work to your PC at home, then it'll use the local SQL server there too. This is what I do. I use RedGate tools to sync up my DBs.
If you have SQL and VS on the same machine (your laptop) and are trying to connect to the SQL server from VS (e.g. in debugger), then try the following: (I'm working like this all the time)
You can use (local) or . as the server in a SQL connection to refer to the local machine.
In your case:
(local)\SQLEXPRESS
or
.\SQLEXPRESS
Is it possible you overlooked turning on TCP/IP fro SQLExpress in the configuration manager?
Have you tried using a wild card? For example let others access you through '%', since you want your computer to be accessed anywhere, your MySQL host is actually your IP address.

Not connecting to SQL Server over VPN

I have connected for the first time to an existing network over VPN. I can ping the IP address which is used by the SQL Server from the VPN client, but SSMS does not connect to the SQL Server. I am using the right login id and password.
Why could this happen? Any ideas?
On a default instance, SQL Server listens on TCP/1433 by default. This can be changed. On a named instance, unless configured differently, SQL Server listens on a dynamic TCP port. What that means is should SQL Server discover that the port is in use, it will pick another TCP port. How clients usually find the right port in the case of a named instance is by talking to the SQL Server Listener Service/SQL Browser. That listens on UDP/1434 and cannot be changed. If you have a named instance, you can configure a static port and if you have a need to use Kerberos authentication/delegation, you should.
What you'll need to determine is what port your SQL Server is listening on. Then you'll need to get with your networking/security folks to determine if they allow communication to that port via VPN. If they are, as indicated, check your firewall settings. Some systems have multiple firewalls (my laptop is an example). If so, you'll need to check all the firewalls on your system.
If all of those are correct, verify the server doesn't have an IPSEC policy that restricts access to the SQL Server port via IP address. That also could result in you being blocked.
When this happens to me, it is because DNS is not working properly. Try using the IP address instead of the server name in the SQL Server login.
Make sure SQL Server is enabled for TCP/IP (someone may have disabled it)?
This will also help you to check/verify the port number the SQL instance is using (in case someone changed it from the default of port 1433).
Obviously port 1433 (or whatever port SQL is listening on) needs to be unblocked by any firewalls between your machine and the box SQL is running on.
To check SQL's network configuration (requires SQL Server Client Tools installed):
Start -> Programs -> SQL Server 200x -> Configuration Tools -> SQL Server Configuration Manager
Connect to the machine you need then expand the Tree Item (LHS) "SQL Server Network Configuration", then pick instance. You should have four options - Shared Memory, Named Pipes, TCP/IP and VIA. You can check that TCP/IP is enabled in the RHS window.
If you double click TCP/IP and hit the "Advanced" tab, you can also view the Port number.
Other thoughts.. Are you using SQL Authentication or Windows (Domain) authentication?
If SQL Authentication (which I assume you are using given you said username and password), are you sure the SQL instance you're connecting to has mixed mode authentication enabled? If not, you have to connect as Administrator and change the default security settings to allow SQL authentication.
If Windows Authentication, could your network be using Kerberos potentially? One would think the VPN credentials would be used for the handshake. I'd check your account has appropriate login rights.
I also had this problem when trying to connect remotely via the Hamachi VPN. I had tried everything available on the internet (including this post) and it still did not work. Note that everything worked fine when the same database was installed on a machine on my local network. Finally I was able to achieve success using the following fix: on the remote machine, enable the IP address on the TCP/IP protocol, like so:
On the remote machine, start SQL Server Configuration Manager, expand SQL Server Network Configuration, select "Protocols for SQLEXPRESS" (or "MSSQLSERVER"), right-click on TCP/IP, on the resulting dialog box go to the IP Addresses tab, and make sure the "IP1" element is Active=Yes and Enabled=Yes. Make note of the IP address (for me it wasn't necessary to modify these). Then stop and start the SQL Server Services. After that, ensure that the firewall on the remote machine is either disabled, or an exception is allowed for port 1433 that includes both the local subnet and the subnet for the address noted in the previous dialog box. On your local machine you should be able to connect by setting the server name to 192.168.1.22\SQLEXPRESS (or [ip address of remote machine]\[SQL server instance name]).
Hope that helps.
Check that the port that SQL Server is using is not being blocked by either your firewall or the VPN.
I have this issue a lot with Citrix Access Gateway. I usually get a timeout error. If you are able to connect to the database from a client on the network, but not from a remote client via VPN, you can forget most suggestions given here, because they all address server-side issues.
I am able to connect when I increase the timeout from the default (15 seconds) to 60 seconds, and for good measure, force the protocol to TCP/IP. These things can be done on the Options screen of the login dialog:
As long as you have the firewall set to allow the port that your SQL Server instance is using, all you need to do is change Data Source from =Server name to =IP,Port
ie, in the connection string use something like this.
Data Source=190.190.1.100,1433;
You should not have to change anything on the client side.
You may not have the UDP port open/VPN-forwarded, it's port number 1433.
Despite client protocol name of "TCP/IP", mssql uses UDP for bitbanging.
SQL Server uses the TCP port 1433. This is probably blocked either by the VPN tunnel or by a firewall on the server.
When connecting to VPN every message goes through VPN server and it could not be forwarding your messages to that port SQL server is working on.
Try
disable VPN settings->Properties->TCP/IP properties->Advanced->Use default gateway on remote network.
This way you will first try to connect local IP of SQL server and only then use VPN server to forward you
I was having this issue too with SQL Server 2017.
I'm on the same network as the server via VPN and can ping it. After being frustrated that no authentication method would work - I set up an SSH server on the SQL server - and I was able to connect normally. This confirmed the correct port wasn't being hit for some reason. I even created a new user accounts, domain accounts, firewall checks on both ends, etc...
The solution for me was:
1. Set Connection to strictly use TCP/IP on SSMS
2. Use a custom string to point to the default port (ex: Data Source=192.168.168.166,1433;)
All the other comments above haven't worked so far. It looks like it was mandatory to include the port (even though its default).
This is what fixed my connection problem of accessing the SQL Server 2012 Database via VPN
With the SQL Server 2012 Configuration Manager,
I went to the SQL Server Network configuration
Then clicked on the NEW server instance and double-clicked the TCP/IP protocol
[I had also previously enabled this option and rebooted the server but that did still not fix it]
now that the TCP/IP was enabled, I noted that all of the IP port slots in the 'IP Addresses' tab of the TCP/IP Properties advanced dialog were set to Enabled=No.
I was curious to why my new installation set all of these IP slots to NO rather than Yes, so I just changed them to YES.
Now the connection to the sever via VPN works great, I did not change any port numbers.
Note: I also had SQL Server 2008 default from the Visual studio 2010 uninstalled, but I do not think that had a direct effect to the TCP/IP situation. A coworker told me that the 2008 and 2005 installations which come with visual studio may interfere with SQL 2012.
If you're using sql server 2005, start sql server browser service first.
Try changing Server name with its IP
for example
SERVERNAME//SQLSERVER -> 192.168.0.2//SQLSERVER
its work flawlessly with me using VPN
Make sure to add port 1433 to firewall exceptions and make sure "Any IP Address" is checked under Firewall port setting(see attachment).
In case everything works fine on your LAN, but fails when client application tries to establish connection thru a VPN, you might consider changing your router MTU (Maximum Transmit Unit) settings from AUTO to a lower than maximum value.
Further references:
https://faq.draytek.com.au/2021/03/15/adjusting-vpn-mss-mtu-settings/
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/217130-mtu-issues-in-vpn-connections
https://community.ui.com/questions/EdgeRouter-4-FortiGate-VPN-Performance-issues/84932edc-d2ee-4bdd-bd47-e0993210f17e?page=1
My solution was enable and start the service "SQL Server Browser".
Be also sure, you allow this service in your firewall.
I have a similar problem but with a strange effect.
If I use SMSS over a VPN (site2site) I can't connect. But If I use OpenVPN client it's working.
And this isn't the only thing... Using the same site2site vpn but with DBeaver or HeidiSQL I can connect... I wrote a simple c# console app to test the connection and it's working. The only issue is with SMSS.
I don't know why but I'm very curious about that :)