Azure storage emulator suddenly stopped working

Question

I have been using the storage emulator for Azure for months now. However i attempted to start it today and it keeps crashing. It told me to run an exe called DSInit.exe. This is supposed to initialise the storage emulator, but it fails. I am presented with the following message

"Cannot create database 'DevelopmentStorageDb20110816' : 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: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified)

One or more initialization actions have failed. Resolve these errors before attempting to run the storage emulator again. These errors can occur if SQL Server was installed by someone other than the current user. Please refer to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=205140 for more details."

Has anyone ever come across this before. I cant figure out why it wont work all of a sudden.

Thanks

Answer 1

Strange, sounds like the Emulator has lost its ability to talk to the SQL Instance, maybe you could run DSInit again to initialize another instance on your local SQL Server?

http://kristofmattei.be/2010/01/28/windows-azure-sdk-connecting-to-non-sqlexpress-instance/

Has something changed on your dev machine the last few months with SQL Server or the Azure SDK? What version of the SDK are you running?

Answer 2

StevenR and Kenneth are correct. please check if something has changed on the SQL Server instance. Even if we haven't done anything to SQL Server, it would be better if we can check it, for example, perhaps the SQL Server instance has crashed, and requires restarting.

Best Regards,

Ming Xu.