When working with a recent customer I came across a rather odd issue. I was creating a second XenApp farm for testing, however, I kept getting a failure when “Initializing the Citrix data store”.
The installer log showed little more than the following.
Exception: Initializing the Citrix data store failed.
The Windows system event log showed some further detail but still wasn’t giving much away. I had gone through many different troubleshooting steps including different database servers, rebuilding the server from a clean Windows DVD and manually setting up an ODBC connect to test the username, password and database. Everything worked as expected but the farm could still not be created.
Log Name: System
Source: IMAService
Date: 30/01/2012 17:04:42
Event ID: 3989
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: Server1
Description:
Citrix XenApp failed to connect to the Data Store. ODBC error while connecting to the database: IM002 -> [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified
Finally I tried some further troubleshooting including changing the farm name, database name, username and password. I was using SQL authentication in this instance, ultimately I found the issue was caused by the use of a semi-colon ; in the password. It appears ; is either an illegal or escape character for the XenApp farm creation. It is worth noting the semi-colon was accepted in an OBDC connection and at the SQL server.
Hope this helps!
