An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host

Question

We have a WPF application which gets data from an Analysis Services Cube. The client connects directly to the database using ADOMD.NET.

The WPF application works fine on existing Windows XP machines. Windows 7 however throws the following error:

System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: An exception occurred during the operation, making the result invalid.  Check InnerException for exception details. ---> Microsoft.AnalysisServices.AdomdClient.AdomdConnectionException: The connection either timed out or was lost. ---> System.IO.IOException: Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host. ---> System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host

I've narrowed the issue down further to be something around how the data is retrieved using ADOMD.NET. From what I understand, there 4 methods to retrieve data. It is only when I use a CellSet that this error occurs.

In fact, I can use the same MDX statement which causes the exception above to return data just fine using the XmlReader. It is only when I use the CellSet that the exception gets thrown.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Turns out that this was a bug in Kerberos on Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Aware Operating Systems. This means Windows Vista+ and Windows Server 2008+. Apparently it was fixed in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

In my scenario above I had Windows 7 clients connecting to Windows Server 2008 and so we needed to apply the fix to only the server. The fix is in KB969083.

If you are looking for more details, it took quite a bit of searching to find the issue. The KB doesn't mention my exact error above at all and apparently, that error is one of many ways in which the bug manifests itself.

So here's additional links for further reading if you wish:

• Updated Errors may occur after configuring Analysis Services to use Kerberos authentication on Advanced Encryption Standard Aware Operating Systems (here)
• Windows Server 2008 Kerberos Bug – Transport Connection Issues with SSAS data (here)
• SSAS: Kerberos kills ‘large’ MDX queries on Windows Server 2008 (here)