I use Vista running on a Virtual PC as my development environment (I used to use WinXP, but then came along Windows Azure which required either Vista or Win Server 2003). The usage of SQL Server Management Studio on the Virtual PC was slowing down the system. So, I wanted to use my Host Operating System to access the SQL Server using SQL Management Studio. By default the SQL Server engine is configured to minimise the surface of attack. So, remote access to the sql server engine is also not enabled.

To access remotely, the TCP/IP protocol needs to be enabled, using the SQL Server Configuration Manager.

There after, it is recommended to allow remote connections via specified ports. So, I did that as shown below.

To test the configuration, I used a command from the remote computer.

Thumbs up. There were no error messages displayed after executing the above command

I expected a nice little text box in the SQL Server Management Studio connection dialog where I could specify the TCP/IP port number. It turns out there isn't and that I could simply append the port number in the same way I tested from command line.

That's it, a little burden outsourced to the Host PC.