Use of static and dynamic ports with SQL Server aliases

[Simon Birkinshaw]

HI,
I have a cluster set up running Windows 2003 Enterprise 64 bit and SQL 2005 Enterprise 64 bit. I have created the cluster and now want to have the clients connect to the instance using an alias. We have found that if the alias is created using a dynamically defined port the client cannot connect and must name the port number SQL is currently listening on in addition to the alias name. This of course gives us a bit of a headache if all the clients need to name the port number they are connecting to and possibly changing their connection strings if the server reboots and gets a different dynamically allocated port.
Has anyone else had a similar problem and can tell us what we might be doing wrong and possible workarounds. One such would be defining a static port number to the instance but we would like to avid this if possible. As far as we know there are no filters on the firewall.
thanks
Simon Birkinshaw
HP OS
Bracknell.