Cannot connect to the SharePoint Central Admin Site (Error 503 Service Unavailable).
This may at first manifest itself as a generic SharePoint “Error” with a “return to site” link that does not work. This is indicative that the SharePoint site is up and running but the SharePoint site cannot connect to the SharePoint Content Database with the current credentials.
Update the following SQL services with the new account password. This assumes that all SQL services use the same account and password.
- SQL Server (instance name)
- SQL Server Agent (instance name)
- SQL Server Browser
- SQL Server FullText Search (instance name)
The SQL logs will have errors that a specific account from a specific IP address cannot connect.
Login failed for user 'DOMAIN\your.sql.server.service.account'. [CLIENT: 192.XXX.XXX.XXX]
To Correct This
Change the password on a domain controller or via ADUC to comply with any policies that may be in place. This post came about because of a GPO that was being applied to service accounts and admin accounts.
- Log on the server running the Central Administration web site.
- Navigate to the following location:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\bin
- Run the following command to change the Farm Credentials account used to access SQL Server
Stsadm –o updatefarmcredentials –userlogin DomainName\UserName -password NewPassword
- When completed, run the IIS Reset command
iisreset /noforce
More help on this can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934838
