So I have an External SQL 2008 SP2 64 bit server we're going to use for our new CRm11 deployment.
The server I'm deploying CRM on is a brand new Dell R610 running server 2008 Enterprise 64 bit.
I'm creating a new deployment, later I will be upgrading a CRM4 deployment but that has nothing to do with my current problem.
The service account entered for the CRM service is a domain admin account.
I also added that account as a local admin account on the SQL server, even though I shouldn't have to since it's a domain admin account.
I can telnet from the new CRM server to the SQL server on various ports the SQL server is listening on, that are listed in a netstat -a on the SQL server. (just to test FW) (although i don't see it listening on 1433 which is strange). TELNETTing to test ports works fine. This SQL server is in production already though for several other internal applications.
The sqlserveragent service IS running on the target SQL server, and I recycled it to be safe.
Still, i'm getting "SQLSERVERAGENT (SQLSERVERAGENT) service is not running on the server " when I do the system check.
I'm not sure what to do next, other systems connect to the DB fine. It's on the same network segment as the SQL server.
So anyway, one thing I noticed about this DB server while looking at the reporting services config is that the default instance on it isn't MSSQL (IE Servernam\MSSQL) but rather whomever built it named it "Servername\Servername"
In the field during the CRM2011 setup early on it asks you "Enter or select the name of the computer that is running SQL Server to use with the deployment"
It doesn't tell you to target the instance, so if you renamed your default instance this part will fail at the sqlserveragent check.
When I went back and entered Servername\servername for my sql server field in the setup, it went through. I figured it out while posting this but I figured someone else might want to know.