Troubleshooting SQL Azure

SQL Azure Database requires the use of SQL Authentication. If you cannot successfully log in, either your credentials are not valid or the database you requested is not available.

If you need to recover login names or passwords, contact your service administrator, who can grant you proper access to the server and database. Service administrators can also reset their own passwords using the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal.

If the server is already provisioned and the SQL Azure Database service is available (you can check this using the Azure Health Status page), the likely cause is configuration issues in your on-site installation. For instance, you may be unable to resolve the name (which can be tested with tools such as tracert), you may have a firewall blocking port 1433 that is used by SQL Azure, or you may be using a proxy server that is not configured properly. Use the same techniques to troubleshoot these difficulties that you would for SQL Server.

Note

To see the status of all Windows Azure platform services, use the Azure Health Status page. The status page contains current service status information and historical service data. To connect to the status page and check SQL Azure Database service availability in real time, click the Service Dashboard button on the Windows Azure Support page or click Azure Health Status to go directly to the status page.

You may receive general network errors because SQL Azure Database might disconnect users in these circumstances:

• When a connection is idle for an extended period of time.
  
  
• When a connection consumes an excessive amount of resources or holds onto a transaction for an extended period of time.
  
  
• If the server is too busy.
  
  

A tabular data stream (TDS) error token is sent prior to disconnecting users, when possible. To improve application experience, we recommend that you implement the retry logic in your SQL Azure applications to catch these errors. When an error occurs, re-establish the connection, and then re-execute the failed commands or the query.

Note
Maximum allowable durations are subject to change depending on the resource usage. A logged-in session that has been idle for 30 minutes will be terminated automatically.

For more information on how to handle the connection-loss errors, see Connection Management in SQL Azure article in the TechNet Wiki. This article lists the reasons for connection-losses and provides guidelines and best coding practices on how to manage the connection life cycle in SQL Azure.

To improve performance in SQL Azure Database, use the same techniques you would use with SQL Server. For more information, see Troubleshooting Queries in SQL Server Books Online.

SQL Azure Database uses a subset of SQL Server error messages. For more information about SQL Server errors, see Errors and Events Reference (Database Engine) in SQL Server Books Online.

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