Easy way to check connectivity to SQL Server from client

A simple test method for SQL connectivity is to create an empty text file, with a file extension of "UDL". You can create it in Notepad. And it can have any name. I use "TestSQL.UDL"

Save it on the desktop of a windows PC and double click it.

A "Data Link Properties" dialog box will pop up where you can enter the IP address of the SQL server and also a SQL username and password.

Click the "Test Connection" button to see if you can connect.

If the server is using TCP/IP, then the simple way is to just telnet to the SQL Server port and see if it connects. By default, that's port 1433, so this should work:

telnet servername 1433

That will probably be appropriate in most cases.

If it's using a different port, or dynamic ports (common with a named instance), then you'll need to determine which port it's currently listening on. Check SQL Server configuration manager to see if it's a specific port, or dynamic ports. If it's using dynamic ports, then as long as you don't have multiple instances on the server, netstat -abn is probably the simplest way to find what it's using. Otherwise, dig through the Windows event log or the SQL Server error log for a message indicating which port is in use by the instance.

If SQL Server is using Named Pipes, then I believe if you're able to access shares on the machine, you have adequate network connectivity. This article says you can go further and try connecting to the IPC$ share:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa275787%28v=sql.80%29.aspx

net use \\servername\IPC$

That's written for SQL Server 2000, but I don't imagine this aspect has changed much, if at all.

Provided you have the Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo assembly in your GAC on the local machine, this can be easily done with PowerShell:

[Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo') | Out-Null

$server = New-Object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Server("YourSqlServerName")

# do a simple operation to see if you can get data
Try {
    $server.Version | Out-Null
    Write-Host "SQL Server connection successful!!!"
}
Catch [System.Exception] {
    Write-Host "Error connecting to SQL Server..."
}