In my development environment, I have SQL 2000, SQL 2005, SQL 2008 R2 installed. There are two instances of each: DEV and STAGING. Each has the exact same copy of it's counterparts databases (i.e. SQL2K and SQL2K_Staging have the same databases). I use RedGate's SQL Comparison tools to generate change scripts and migration scripts when developing.
On November 6, 2013, I installed two instances of SQL 2012. After that, all of my SQL Maintenance Plans started to fail. I have a single maint plan with many components to clean up backup directories of old backups and to back up various databases on all of the servers into different folders and different retention periods. Once I installed SQL 2012, the SQL 2000 backups all fail on "Access Denied" errors.
PLEASE DO NOT tell me that SQL 2000 can't run on Windows 7 because it does if you know how to install it. I have been running SQL 2000 DEV on Vista, then Windows 7 for years with absolutely no issues except the UI's for SQL 2000 which I do not use. I have always used the latest version of SQL Management Studio to manage my SQL 2000 instances. Also, PLEASE DO NOT tell me to upgrade my databases. I have a very large corporate client that is unwilling to fix something that isn't broken and they have many, many SQL 2000 instances and servers running in their organization.
I have done a lot of testing and research and simply cannot find any answers. I have done the following to try and diagnose the issue:
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Created a maintenance plan with a single SQL 2000 database backup in the SQL 2012 SSMS environment. When creating the connection to the SQL 2000 database, the SQL 2000 instances do not appear in the list of available servers. I can type in the
/ and it appears to connect fine. If I type in a false or nonexistent name it throws an error, so I know the name is OK. - Create the same maintenance plan with the single SQL 2000 database backup in the SQL 2008 R2 SSMS environment - same failure result. Again, I cannot see the SQL 2000 instances in the list but can type in the instance names OK.
- Create the same maintenance plan with the single SQL 2000 database backup in the SQL 2005 SSMS environment and get the same failure result. Again, I cannot see the SQL 2000 instances in the list but can type in the instance names OK.
- Uninstalled both instances of SQL 2000, restarted, then reinstalled and ran the latest service pack upgrade for both. Restarted and Re-attached my USER databases and tried all of the above scenarios again.
- I can create maintenance plans using the SQL 2000 Enterprise Manager interface and the backups run not problem to the same target directories.
- All of the instances of ALL versions of SQL server and their associated SQL Agent services run under the same Credentials which is a specific machine admin account I use for SQL related services, so permissions is not an issue.
- I have custom software and Access ADP applications that connect to those SQL 2000 instances with no problems.
- I have Aliases set up for those SQL 2000 instances that I use for "mocking up" connections so they contain the same server/instance names in connection strings as the target deployment environment. All of these aliases work fine.
I also noticed that the Network Utility for SQL 2000 no longer shows the SQL 2000 instances so you cannot set any of the libraries for them. I cannot say whether this was the case prior to installing SQL 2012 because I really never use it in my development environment.
YES - SQL 2000 is running when I perform these tests.
The only recourse for me now, since I have to have SQL 2012 in my toolbox is to install SQL 2005 with the SQL 2000 instance names and run all of the databases in SQL 2000 (SQL8) mode. But I don't want to have to do that because there is a remote possibility that a migration script might end up with T-SQL code in it that will fail on the client's SQL 2000 installation. That would be very bad. In 8 years developing software for this company I have never deployed a change script that failed and I don't want to start now.
I appreciate any advice or insights from the community that I get. Thanks.