SQL Server 2012 TDE Restore Certificate Issue

Question

I have two instances of SQL Server 2012 Enterprise but struggling to restore a TDE database from a set of backups (full, differential and log) from instance one to instance two. I am getting the error 'Cannot find server certificate with thumbprint'.

Instance one and two both have master keys with the same password, I have backed up the certificate and private file from instance one and restored to instance two. If I look in the Security > Certificates folder of the master DB on instance two I can see it listed.

If I try a restore despite have imported the same certificate and it being present I still get the error 'Cannot find server certificate with thumbprint', can somebody please advise as to what to do next?

If I try reimporting the certificate again I get the message 'A certificate with name 'ServerCert' already exists or this certificate already has been added to the database.'

I have also tried restoring/replacing the database on instance one from the backup sets and they work, just not when restoring to instance two.

Any help would be much appreciated :-)

Answer 1

Despite retrying the same process several times, I removed the TDE, certificate and master keys across all instances and started from scratch with the exception of re-backing up the database. Despite all passwords and certificate names being the same still no joy.

I then removed the TDE, certificate and master keys across all instances, restarted both instances, then created a master key, then the cert, reapplied the TDE, then carried out all new full, differential and transaction log backups all on instance one. Backup up the certificate from instance one, then on instance two created the same master key, imported the backup up certificate from instance one and then carried out the database restore and all is well.

None of my T-SQL changed in any way, the only think I can gather is some sort of security failed to correctly apply, maybe a tempdb issue.

I have read others having the same issues, I hope this helps others.