Resolve connection errors after migrating Microsoft SQL Server to the AWS Cloud - AWS Prescriptive Guidance
SummaryPrerequisites and limitationsToolsEpicsRelated resources

Resolve connection errors after migrating Microsoft SQL Server to the AWS Cloud

Created by Premkumar Chelladurai (AWS)

Environment: Production

Technologies: Operating systems; Migration

Workload: Microsoft

AWS services: Amazon EC2

Summary

After you migrate Microsoft SQL Server running on Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012, or 2012 R2 to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud, the connection to SQL Server fails and the following errors appear: 

  • [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][DBNETLIB] General Network error

  • ERROR [08S01] [Microsoft][SQL Native Client]Communication link failure. System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: A transport-level error has occurred when sending the request to the server. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.)

  • TCP Provider: The semaphore timeout period has expired

This pattern describes how you can resolve these errors by turning off the Windows Scalable Networking Pack (SNP) features at the operating system (OS) and network interface level for SQL Server running on Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012, or 2012 R2.

Prerequisites and limitations

Prerequisites

  • Administrator privileges for Windows Server.

  • If you used AWS Application Migration Service as your migration tool, you require one of the following Windows Server versions:

    • Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1, 2012, or 2012 R2

  • If you used CloudEndure Migration as your migration tool, you require one of the following Windows Server versions:

    • Windows Server 2003 R2 Service Pack 3, 2008, 2008 R2 Service Pack 1, 2012, or 2012 R2

Tools

  • Amazon EC2 – Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) provides scalable computing capacity in the AWS Cloud. You can use Amazon EC2 to launch as many or as few virtual servers as you need, and you can scale out or scale in. 

  • Windows Server – Windows Server is a platform for building an infrastructure of connected applications, networks, and web services.

Epics

TaskDescriptionSkills required
Turn off SNP features at the OS level.

  1. Sign in to Windows Server and open a command prompt as an administrator.

  2. Run the netsh int tcp show global command.

  3. In the output, check if either Receive-Side Scaling or Chimney Offload is in enabled mode. If either of them is enabled, run the following commands:

    • netsh int tcp set global chimney=disabled

    • netsh int tcp set global rss=disabled

AWS administrator, AWS systems administrator, Migration engineer, Cloud administrator
Turn off SNP features at the elastic network interface level.

  1. Choose Start, enter ncpa.cpl, and then press Enter. 

  2. Right-click Elastic Network Adapter.

  3. In the popup menu, choose Properties.

  4. In the Ethernet Adapter Properties window, choose Configure.

  5. In the Amazon Elastic Network Adapter Properties popup window, choose the Advanced tab.

  6. In the Property section, turn off all offloads and RSS.

AWS administrator, Cloud administrator, AWS systems administrator

Related resources