You receive a "Warning SuperSocket Info" warning information when a SQL Server service account is a domain user (303411)

SYMPTOMS

When SQL Server starts on a computer that is running Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or Microsoft SQL Server 2005, the SQL Server program always attempts to register the virtual server in the Active Directory. The following event may be logged in the event log: SuperSocket info: (SpnRegister): Error 8344 SuperSocket Info: (SPNRegister) : Error 1355 SuperSocket info: SpnUnRegister() : Error 8344.NoteError 1355 is equal to ERROR_NO_SUCH_DOMAIN. Error 8344 is equal to insufficient permissions to perform the registration operation. This is shown as a warning for the SPNRegister function and as an error for the SpnUnRegister function.

This message is not an error message. This text is only a warning that SQL Server cannot register a service principal name (SPN). This indicates that the security mechanism that will be used is Microsoft Windows NT Challenge\Response (NTLM) authentication instead of Kerberos authentication.

These messages should only be considered a problem if your SQL Server installation requires Kerberos authentication. Otherwise, these messages can be ignored safely.

CAUSE

The message usually appears because the SQL Server service account is running as a domain user who does not have requisite permissions to register SPNs. With Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3), you can enable Kerberos authentication on server clusters. For instructions on how to do this, see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

319723 Information about SQL Server 2000 Kerberos support, including SQL Server virtual servers on server clusters

RESOLUTION

You can also edit the account's Access Control Settings permissions in the Active Directory directory service to enable the Read servicePrincipalName permission and the Write servicePrincipalName permission for the SQL Service account.

Warning If you use the Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) Edit snap-in, the LDP utility, or any other LDAP version 3 clients, and you incorrectly modify the attributes of Active Directory objects, you can cause serious problems. These problems may require that you reinstall Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server, Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, or both Windows and Exchange. Microsoft cannot guarantee that problems caused by incorrectly modifying Active Directory object attributes can be solved. Modify these attributes at your own risk.

REFERENCES

For more information, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

235529 Kerberos support on Windows 2000-based server clusters

269229 How to manually re-create the Cluster service account