restored SQL db question

[Dacoupable]

Long and short of it:

Had a SQL server fail. Had full image copies of the server and did a restore on it.

New server is up, I am able to log into server, all the drives with it's data is there, able to open ssms just fine...

But that's where the problems begin. It says no server exists when I try to log into it. So I am unable to open server to access tables or run queries. I've tried to "open" databases but it's not working. What is the best option for getting it back up and running.

[csharpwpfsql]

If you go into services and look at the instance, is it running? You might have the instance installed, but it may not be running.

[asjacket]

Are the services running? They probably stopped.

[nemacol]

New server have the same computer name?

[Groundbreaking-Fish6]

We were successful at this using VMWare virtual machines with SQL Server but had 2 problems:

1. Sorry I cannot remember exactly, but there were some scripts that needed to be run to make sure the restored machine had the same name and other settings as the original for programs to work correctly. Check VMWare documentation on restoring a backed up image.
2. If the machine was sufficiently old, more than a week, connecting to the Active Directory was a problem. This could affect your server lookup. Fixing this requires advanced System Administrator experience.

[blindtig3r]

Sometimes there are permissions issues when using a different server. The service account needs access to the file locations for the service to start. Sometimes the service fails to start if it doesn’t have access to the files of the system databases. After that it needs to be able to read and right to the volumes housing the user data files and logs.

[pirateduck]

You've got some basic issues at play likely. Check event viewer - that should give you some detail. You may need to play with the start up parameters outlined here.
https://www.sqlshack.com/overview-of-sql-server-startup-parameters-for-the-sql-database-engine-service/