TF246017: team foundation server could not connect to the database

Question

I am facing a problem with logging into TFS. I get the following error:

Exception Message: TF246017: Team Foundation Server could not connect to the database. Verify that the server that is hosting the database is operational, and that network problems are not blocking communication with the server. (type SoapException)SoapException Details:

Answer 1

Hi the below steps worked for me.

Select Application Tier in the TFS Administration Console.

In the Application Tier Summary which contains the Service Account details.

Click Reapply Account.

Answer 2

I know this is old, but here was my situation: We have 11 collections on our instance, 2 were failing with this error, showing me it wasn't an access / connection issue. Checking Event Viewer (as @Andy Li-MSFT suggests) showed it was A timeout occurred while waiting for memory resources to execute the query in resource pool 'default' (2). Rerun the query.

Checking task manager showed the culprit - elastic search was using well over 2GB of memory. I killed the service, the collections applied the patch quickly without issue.

Looks like I need to ask our server admins to give us a bit more memory....