Mike,

the registry keys and values you mentioned, that's exactly what I was looking for.

Thanks a lot
Melanie
 Ah, you want to enumerate SQL instances in order to connect to one?  To me that screams SMO (SQL Management Objects) but it's been some time since I played with SQL-DMO (SMO's previous incarnation) so I can't offer any authoritative comments.

 However, I'd be looking at the ManagedComputer class in the Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Wmi namespace (in .NET 2.0).  I think given a ManagedComputer object, you can get a collection of the SQL instances on that computer with the ServerInstances property.  But I don't really know how you'd then get a connection string for one of those particular instances to actually connect to.  Maybe someone in the programming newsgroup can help.

 If you want to just poke through the registry (I wouldn't recommend it) I'd guess the virtual server name is stored in the ClusterName reg string value of the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\Cluster\ key.  I think the instance names would then be stored under the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\Instance Names\SQL\ key (or you could get them from HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\InstalledInstances (and multi-valued string)).  The steps would probably be 1) look up the instances in the InstalledInstances value, 2) for the instance you're after get the reg branch from the HKLM\...\Instance Names\SQL\<InstanceName>, 3) from the reg branch specified in that value get the virtual server name from the HKLM\...\<InstanceBranch>\Cluster\ClusterName value.  Something like that (that's really just a guess).

 --
 mike hodgson
 http://sqlnerd.blogspot.com

 CShane wrote:
Not sure exactly what the situation is, but could cluster.exe help?  It can
list groups and resources.  What information IS known?  Do you know the node
name and are just looking for a virtual server name?  Do you want to list ALL
sql servers in the domain?  In short, what do you know and what are you
looking for?

Shane

"melanie" wrote:

 This works if I already have a connection to the sql server. But my problem is I have to find the name of the server I can connect to.

Any other solution?

Thanks
Melanie
 "Mike Hodgson" <e1minst3r@gmail.com> wrote in message news:%23iRtotmNGHA.2320@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
 The correct way to do this in SQL 2005 is the same as the correct way to do it in SQL 2000.  That is,

   SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('MachineName')

 No need to go messing about in the registry, simply ask SQL Server and it will tell you.  Check out the SERVERPROPERTY() function in BOL - it's packed full of useful goodies (so to is OBJECTPROPERTY(), INDEXPROPERTY() and the INFORMATION_SCHEMA schema).

 --
 mike hodgson
 http://sqlnerd.blogspot.com

 melanie wrote:
Hello,

Does anybody know how I can programmatically detect the name of the virtual
server if sql 2005 is running on a cluster?

In previous sql versions I looked up the following registry entries:

Default instance: "HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\MSSQLServer\\Cluster" REG_SZ
"ClusterName"
Named instance: "HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Microsoft SQL
Server\\<InstanceName>\\Cluster" REG_SZ "ClusterName"

It seems as if this changed for sql 2005, right?

Thanks a lot
Melanie