Well, I recently had the pleasure of fighting with SQL Server 2008 Express and our VPN at the office.  Now, going in, I had a great deal of difficulty finding anyone else having problems.  The situation: we have an SBS 2003 R2 Premium Machine with ISA 2004 (ugh) with our application server behind it.  VPN runs into ISA and RRAS.  Now, these instructions assume you have properly configured ISA for your VPN, that your SQL server instance is configured so that it works on your remote machine and that you’re using the Advanced Edition of SQL Server 2008 Express.

So, after getting really frustrated by finally getting SQL Browser running on the machine and only having the machine viewable on the local LAN and not via VPN I gave up.  This was after spending a few days poking the damn thing trying to get it to cooperate.

I tried setting up Hamachi on the machine (Hamachi doesn’t play nice with ISA 2006 as it turns out too) and this didn’t by-pass my problem either.  So, after further battling with Aliases and attempting to see if CLICONFIG.exe could help, I found….the problem.

We’re using a named instance of SQL Server 2008 Express, and this, apparently by default, does not have a default set of settings applied to it.

So, to get it working I had to first ensure that the SQL Browser was running (there are plenty of instructions out there on that).  Then I had to add SQLBROWSER.exe and the SQL Instance’s executable to the firewall’s exceptions list.

Once that is done, you open Sql Server Configuration Manager and click on the plus sign beside SQL Server Network Configuration.  Choose the named instance from the list, which will show in the opposite area the 4 connection protocols for the instance.  Make sure TCP/IP is enabled!  Right click on it, go to properties.  The next dialog will have two tabs, choose IP Addresses from the pair.  You will see IP1, IP2 and IPAll.  Make sure IP1 displays your internal IP address for the machine.  Next skip to the bottom and under TCP Port, ensure that it is set to 1433.

Once that is done, click Apply and OK.  Now on the left hand list, choose SQL Server Services.  Right click on the SQL Server for your named instance and choose Restart.

Now you should be able to connect to your SQL Server via the Windows VPN.