Cannot connect to Server SSMS

Background: You’ve been asked to connect to a SQL Server with the credentials provided to you at work. These credentials most likely will be the Active Directory ones, but you could also be provided credentials for logging into, only the SQL Server.

You open the SQL Server Management Studio, enter in the required information to connect to the server, and see the following dialog show up:

At this point, you’re probably wondering what went wrong. You might have even tried re-entering the credentials to see whether there was a typo.

Solution: This specific error occurs because you have not been provided access to the SQL Server. It’s not something wrong at your end. Your next steps should be to ask whoever wants you to connect to this SQL Server, to provide you with the necessary permissions to log onto the server.

Note that there are 2 layers of access in SQL Server Management Studio.

1 is login and the second is Users.

Logins are provided to people so that they can access the server.

Creating users is to provide them with access to the database. You can have access to the server, but not to the database. That’s an important thing to keep in mind.