Thursday, November 12, 2015

Cannot find server certificate with thumbprint when restoring a SQL Server database

I was recently attempting to restore a database backup that I received from a vendor when I suddenly encountered the following error message:






Well, as it turns out, based on this Microsoft support article: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2300689, the database was backed up using Transparent Data Encryption (TDE).  Therefore, without the certificate information, I would not be able to restore the backups back to my database server.

If the vendor was willing to provide me with the certificate information, then I could use the following method to restore the database: http://sqlserverzest.com/2013/10/03/sql-server-restoring-a-tde-encrypted-database-to-a-different-server/

However, considering that would probably be a compromise of their security, the best thing to do is as advised in the Microsoft support article:


Alter database testDB set encryption off 

Once TDE encryption is turned off, a backup of the database could be created and then provided to us to restore!

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