I have a newly installed Windows 2012R2 cluster in a restricted AD "lab" domain.
There's lots of memory and disk so I have created 3 instances in different versions to support application groups migrating/upgrading.
It all seems to work, I can connect to my instances very well with <network name>\<instance name> as MALABSQL2014\MALABSQL2014 for example (ok I was not feeling esp. creative).
However when I create a maintenance plan, it can't connect and I get:
Failed to acquire connection "Local server connection".
and also
A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server
For database mail, I tried to configure this and a test email worked, but in the log after a restart I see:
There was an error on the connection. Reason: A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible.
I tried several things. Yes the instances are running, yes they allow remote connections and I can connect from a client, however the issue here is localhost connections. Windows firewall is Off, and I am not aware of any other issues with blocked ports locally. I tried setting static ports (1434 for the instance I want here) and that works but I have the same issue with plans, jobs, anything connecting with localhost,
In SSMS on the active node, if I try a connection as
tcp:localhost,1434\MALABSQL2014
I get
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.) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 10061)
But if I use tcp:172.25.16.84,1434\MALABSQL2014, that works (this is the IP for the clustered instance).
I have found some references for these errors but none of them apply as they are for different situations or versions. Is there a more recent reference that will help me troubleshoot this issue?
