How to connect to MS SQL Server 2019 Instance running in Openshift cluster with SSMS via port-forwarding?

Question

Having:

• An Openshift Cluster version 4.8.18 running on the Azure Openshift Service

• A Project in the cluster running a SQL Server 2019 Instance created via oc new-app like so: oc new-app mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2019-latest -e ACCEPT_EULA=Y -e SA_PASSWORD="securepa$$@asdf" --name sqlserver

• The instance starts properly according to the pod logs and openshift reports OK readiness and liveliness

• By connecting via oc rsh directly to the container, I am able to interact with the database via sqlcmd

I am trying to connect to the database instance with SSMS v18.10 on Windows 10 via the kubernetes port-forwarding mechanism following this post without success:

oc port-forward pod/sqlserver-aaaaaaaaa-aaaaa 1433:1433

Connections on localhost from SSMS with correct credentials always result in the following error:

Cannot connect to localhost.
Additional information:
A network-related or instance-specific error occured while establishing a connection to SQL Server.
...

Note that:

• I am trying to connect while the oc port-forward is running
• I tried disabling the Windows 10 firewall and trying to connect without success
• I tried port forwarding from a web application and it worked with the firewall on with the same cluster

What am I missing here?

UPDATE 1

I have been able to connect to the SQL Server Instance by creating a service of type LoadBalancer via the External IP created by the service.

• AlwaysLearning: What settings are you using in SSMS to connect? In the Server name field are you typing 127.0.0.1,1433?
• AlwaysLearning: The linked blog entry seems to expose the container's port 1433 in its Kubernetes template with containerPort: 1433. Are you sure you don't need to do something like that with oc new-app?
• Chedy2149: @AlwaysLearning I am connecting with SSMS by specifying localhost, I will give a try to 127.0.0.1,1433
• Chedy2149: @AlwaysLearning After creating the deployment with oc new-app I am able to confirm that the port exposed on the pod is 1433

Answer 1

As mentioned in the linked post and by @AlwaysLearning in the comments, you have to connect by refering to localhost by IP(127.0.0.1) and not by hostname(localhost).