During a SharePoint scan, GSX Monitor will query all content databases listed in the configuration database of a SharePoint farm. These databases can be hosted on multiple SQL instances and mapped using aliases. If the farm is using aliases and GSX Monitor does not have this configured, it can cause an error to display.
This article explains how to include an alias used in the configuration database, in order to monitor the SharePoint farm properly.
Symptoms
- Error while opening the database. Please check your credentials/DB configuration.
- SQL Server Down Alert triggered.
How to Solve the Issue
You have determined the configured credentials are correct and GSX Monitor still cannot find one of the SharePoint content databases. This causes the bad credential/database configuration error to display. The reason it cannot find the database is a missing mapping between the SQL instance name and its SharePoint name. If there is a content database listed in the configuration database that uses an alias to refer to an SQL instance, then this alias must also be configured in GSX Monitor. This allows GSX Monitor to create the correct connection string and open the database on the right server.
We first need to locate the alias that is being used by the configuration database.
As we don't know which database is generating this error, we need to run a test to find it. This may be obvious on a small SharePoint farm, and you may not need to do this step. In that case, jump directly to the "Creating the required SQL Server Alias" section below.
Locating the failing database:
- Right-click the SharePoint server that is configured with SQL Role and select Edit Server Configuration.
- Open the Database tab.
- In the SQL Database settings, click the Test Connection button to find out which database is failing:
- Scroll through the results to find the name of the database with Opening [...] failure.
Take note of the database name and the server location that is generating the error, we will need this to configure GSX Monitor later on.
Creating the required SQL Server alias:
In our example above GSX Monitor cannot find the database WSS_Content_SQL_GSXSPDEXSQL64 on GSXSPDEXSQL64. In fact, this is an alias that has been implemented at the SQL Server level, GSX Monitor is just not aware of this, so it fails when attempting to open it. We need to point GSX Monitor to the appropriate database by creating the GSXSPDEXSQL64 alias for the SQL instance GSXSPDEV\Sharepoint where the content database actually is.
- Right-click the SharePoint server and select Edit Server Configuration.
- Open the Database tab.
- Select SQL Server Aliases:
- You can either:
- click Add to manually enter the alias mapping, or
- click Populate to automatically retrieve any existing alias mappings.
- Ensure the the alias is saved when done.
In our example, once GSXSPDEXSQL64 is mapped to the GSXSPDEV\SharePoint server the database can be opened as the alias in the content index resolves to the correct server: