I make extensive use of virtual machines for testing purposes. I recently needed to allow the Network Service account of one of my VMs to connect to SQL Server on another of my VMs. Both machines are on the same domain, so I thought I could use the search feature on the new login dialog to find the Network Service for that machine. Unfortunately it was not so simple. I also had quite a difficult time find information about it on Google.

It turns out to be rather simple though. You just append $ to the name of the remote machine. Suppose my remote machine is on the domain “OURS”, and the machine’s name is “MINE”. Then the SQL login for the Network Service account on MINE is “OURS\MINE$”. You won’t be able to verify this with “Check Name” though. You’ll have to actually try connecting the the SQL Server from the remote machine to make sure it works properly.

Hopefully this will save someone else an hour or two of searching on Google.