Azure SQL Database Name Database Error

Question

Until yesterday, my site (hosted on DiscountASP.net) and the SQL Azure database it connects to were running fine.

For some reason, the site gave way to a named channel error during the night. Error 40.

After prefixing the server name with "tcp:" in the connection string, the error now is:

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 - A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.)

So, just to be clear, the web.config file has not changed at all between the way the last website worked and the element that caused the named error.

Now the username, password and instance name are all correct, since the site runs locally on the remote Azure SQl server.

I checked the instance name and Azure SQl access rules, ensuring that the IP address of the web server is whitelisted.

Any ideas on what happened?

Answer 1

If I understand this right, your local website (locally) can connect to SQL Azure, but your site deployed to Azure cannot?

Make sure your firewall rules have "allow other azure services to access this server." Disabling this option basically prevents any application or service that supports azure from connecting to your database.