Sql-server – SQL Server Service does not start automatically after system restart

sql serversql server 2014windows-server

I have a SQL Server system that reboots weekly (after installing Windows Updates).

The last three weeks I have seen that the SQL Server service does not start when the server comes back up (Configufation Manager shows the service as stopped) the System Event log shows the following errors:

Event ID 7000

The SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) service failed to start due to the
following error: The service did not respond to the start or control
request in a timely fashion.

Event ID 7001

The SQL Server Agent (MSSQLSERVER) service depends on the SQL Server
(MSSQLSERVER) service which failed to start because of the following
error: The service did not respond to the start or control request in
a timely fashion.

Event 7009

The SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) service failed to start due to the
following error: The service did not respond to the start or control
request in a timely fashion.

However, I can start the service manually and it starts up fine.

The service is set to automatically start.

The SQL Server error log does not include any clues either, unfortunately.

Best Answer

One issue that can cause this is that some systems, particularly VMs with the system volume on solid state storage, is that it boots up so fast and gets to the point of starting services before some of the networking has been fully initialized. This, then, results in a failure of the service account authentication, and the service start fails accordingly.

To address this, set the SQL Server services to Automatic (Delayed Start). This will put a 2 minute delay on starting them. If 2 minutes is too much or not enough, you can tweak it by changing HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\AutoStartDelay, or you could create a Task Scheduler job that runs on Windows startup and continually attempts to start the services until they are started.