I am running a named instance on SQL Server 2008 R2 Express and attempting to configure my Windows Firewall to be enabled on the server.
When attempting to connect to the database through the application, if the firewall is disabled I am able to connect to the server, with the firewall is enabled I am unable to connect to the server, so it is narrowed down to a firewall issue.
When the firewall is enabled, the firewall log shows that it is dropping connections to my workstation on ports in the high 50,000 to low 60,000 range. I understand this is due to the named instance being handed off to dynamic ports after establishing the connection on port 1433 and 1434, correct?
To remedy this I have verified on my server that TCP port 1433 and UDP port 1434 are allowing inbound connections. I have also used the network configuration manager to change TCP/IP for the instance to a static port by removing the 0 from Dynamic and assigning a static port, I then add that static port to the firewall rule. The connections still drop.
For testing purposes I created a firewall rule to allow all connections, specifying the source workstation IP. The connection succeeds, but that is not a solution as the workstations are numerous and are using dynamic IP configurations.
I can't imagine that Microsoft would design SQL server to not allow you to have the firewall enabled while using a named instance, so what is the solution I am missing?
Thanks.