Database Mirroring fighting with DocAve

Here's a weird one… while trying to set up DB mirroring of a content database colocated with a SharePoint contentDB, I got the following error:

"The server network address “TCP://SQLServer:5023″ can not be reached or does not exist. Check the network address name and that the ports for the local and remote endpoints are operational"

Turned out that the client had previously installed DocAve, which creates a SQL mirroring endpoint that only supports certificates, not Windows Authentication. This was a pain to find, but easy to fix. Simply use SQL Server Management Studio to connect to your principal and mirror servers, expand Server Object, EndPoints, then Database Mirroring. If there's an existing endpoint, script it as drop & create (in 2008 - for 2005 you need to script the drop and create seperately). Check the authentication component of the script: if you see "CERTIFICATE" and the name of a certificate (possibly similar to DocAve{ID}) then you can simply add the term WINDOWS before CERTIFICATE to allow both Windows & Certificate based authentication. This will let you proceed with manual mirroring and preserve DocAve. Note: the full syntax allows you to specify the type of Windows authentication with a second keyword. Leaving it blank implies NEGOTIATE.

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 13, 2010
  Hi David, thank you for the very informative blog.   You are right that the endpoint created by DocAve only supports certificates in the current version of DocAve.  We will support both certificates and windows authentication in coming release. I'm sure you know this already, in order to use windows authentication, the accounts that you use for your SQL Server service accounts involved in the database mirroring session must be in the same domain or in a trusted domain. If the accounts are not in trusted domains, the connection between the principal and the mirror will fail.   The reason we choose to use certificates is because it's more robust and reliable compare to windows authentication in some of our tested scenarios and in complicated enterprise environments. You may also reuse the DocAve endpoint to setup your own database mirroring by SQL Server Mirror Wizard or T-SQL statements but your method is certainly acceptable also. Thank you. Wei