Doing same things again and again, does not mean they end up always the same way. At one point you want to monitor DPM 2012 R2 and you probably want to use the Central Console to manage your DPM servers. If you want to achieve this, you need to install the Central Console on the SCOM management server. The full installation instructions you will find here on TechNet. Usually this is not a huge deal and it works right away except this time. After I installed the DPM consoles and tried to open the DPM Administrator Console (remotely)on the SCOM management server, it ended up in a grey window (MMC) and few minutes later an error pop up appeared…
Opening the DPM Administrator Console on the DPM server itself worked without a hitch. Checking the DPM console log DPMUI0Curr.errlog on the SCOM management server under “C:\Users\[User]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager\DPMUI0Curr.errlog” showed a clear SQL Server connection exception error was visible…
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: 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 – No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.) —> System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it
Well, the first thoughts were, is the Windows firewall or any other firewall causing this error. After verifying this was not the issue, I checked all services from SQL- and DPM server, in a next step I made sure there is no DNS issue, GPO settings are ok, DPM patch level is on UR6 and there is no account permission problem. After checking EVERYTHING one million times, I got the feeling the SQL exception in DPMUI0Curr.errlog is somewhat misleading. Finally, my fellow DPM guru Philipp Witschi discovered an entry which I have missed so far. When we opened the console locally on the DPM server itself and checked the DPM version in About DPM Help menu, there was this entry…
It was suspicious that there was “localhost” which actually is wrong when you try to connect remotely. I tried to figure out where this setting is located, so I went for the registry and finally I found two connection strings, which I assumed would cause this problem. Under the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\DB
I changed both connection strings to the DPM server name…
…then I restarted the DPM service in Windows Services, to reload the new registry settings…
Finally the DPM console opened on the SCOM management server and also the SCOM DPM tasks worked as expected.
I hope this helps!
