Restoring the Existing Sharepoint farm using different SQL server instance

Question

How to change the Database server instance of the the existing sharepoint 2013, when its current SQL server database instance is corrupt?

Explanation;

->Sharepoint 2013 server lost all the connections to the SQL server database due to server failure (server farm is setup on virtual machine and SQL server on different Virtual machine)

we were able to retrieve the sharepoint databases(including config and content dbs) which were month old.

we have attached these database to the new SQL server instance created (this time the database instance name is different)

but we are not able to configure the existing SharePoint 2013 server to the new database SQL server instance

we tried running the configuration wizard, and also change the server setting running the cliconfg.exe (C:\windows\system32)

but it still points to the old server instance. can anyone please suggest how to restore these sharepoint sites without re-installing the sharepoint 2013 server

thanks n regards

Answer 1

SharePoint does not have a direct way to change the SQL Instance of an existing database. So you have to work with the tool cliconfg.exe, which you already mentioned. As you did not give your old and new SQL-Instance-name, i will give you a sample scenario on how to use it:

SQL-Instance old: SERVEROLD\INSTANCEOLD

SQL-Instance new: SERVERNEW\INSTANCENEW

You have to create a cliconfg Alias in the following way on all of your SharePoint Servers:

Please also ensure, that Windows Firewall does not block incoming traffic on SQL Server.