How to access SQL Server database located in Web Server inside DMZ

Question

Hi,

We have a Web Server 2008 R2 hosting our public website.  This is located in a DMZ.  We created a SQL Server 2008 Express database inside the web server.  We don't really care about data security for this database.  All data are not proprietary.  So people can hack it for all I care.

An ASP.NET web page needs to access the database over the Internet.  I need for a dropdownlist in the web page to be populated with data from the database.  But I can't get it to work.  It works in Visual Studio running on the web server.  Is there any other configuration I need to do to access the database since our production server resides in a DMZ?

Appreciate any help.

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Marilyn Gambone

Answer 1

Hi deskcheck1,

To allow remote connection to SQL Server, we can refer to the following documents to configure SQL Server remote connections, start the SQL Server Browser service, create exceptions in Windows Firewall.

How to enable remote connections in SQL Server 2008:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/walzenbach/archive/2010/04/14/how-to-enable-remote-connections-in-sql-server-2008.aspx

How to configure SQL Server 2005 to allow remote connections (this is also fit to for SQL Server 2008):
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914277

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Allen Li
TechNet Community Support

Answer 2

Hi,

Thank you.  I was able to solve this issue.  Yes, I enabled remote connections in SQL server; also configured Windows Firewall.  But the clincher was that I needed to use SQL Server Authentication instead of Windows Authentication.  I then had to encrypt the username and password so it would be exposed in the Internet.  It's working fine now.

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Marilyn Gambone

Answer 3

You know I MEANT: IT WOULDN'T BE EXPOSED IN THE INTERNET, right? :)

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Marilyn Gambone