We have two production servers, with RCP [out] enabled linked servers set up back and forth between them. When they are rebooted at the same time one of the linked servers will throw this error:
Named Pipes Provider: Could not open a connection to SQL Server [1909]. 767462021 OLE DB provider "SQLNCLI10" for linked server "server3" returned message "Login timeout expired". OLE DB provider "SQLNCLI10" for linked server "server3" returned message "A network-related or instance-specific error has occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. Server is not found or not accessible. Check if instance name is correct and if SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. For more information see SQL Server Books Online.".
I've been fixing it by dropping and re-creating the linked server. It's completely identical as before (in sp_linkedservers), so I'm thinking this shouldn't be necessary. My guess is it's only happening because during startup the other server was not available.
If this is true, can I force a reset of the linked server, without having to restart the server instance, or recreate the linked server?