Laravel connect to a SQL Server 2008 named instance

I am trying to connect an SQL server from an Ubuntu machine, everythings works great except for named instances:

this works

'data' => array(
            'driver'   => 'sqlsrv',
            'host'     => 'xxxx',
            'port'     => 1433,
            'database' => 'db',
            'username' => 'user',
            'password' => 'pwd',
            'prefix'   => '',
        ),

this doesn't

  'data' => array(
                'driver'   => 'sqlsrv',
                'host'     => 'yyyy\NAMEDINSTANCE',
                'port'     => 1433,
                'database' => 'db',
                'username' => 'user',
                'password' => 'pwd',
                'prefix'   => '',
            ),

I always end up with this error:

exception 'PDOException' with message 'SQLSTATE[HY000] Unknown host machine name (severity 2)' in /var/www/public/my.api/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connectors/Connector.php:47

I have tried every possible combination:

• host \ INSTANCE
• host / INSTANCE
• host \\ INSTANCE

Can someone help me ?

Edit: Because I have also tried without instance name (as stated here), the script keep trying to connect until I get this error:

exception 'PDOException' with message 'SQLSTATE[HY000] Unable to connect: Adaptive Server is unavailable or does not exist (severity 9)' in /var/www/public/my.api/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connectors/Connector.php:47

Any editor as Management studio, DBeaver or Database.NET can connect to that instance only by specifying the INSTANCENAME, so it seems more a PDO problem witht the DSN

I also have tried to connect to that named instance directly with tsql without any more luck:

tsql -S SERVER -U usr -P pwd -L dbname

Here the /etc/freetds.conf file:

[global]
        tds version = 8.0
        client charset = UTF-8
        port = 1433
        dump file = /tmp/freetds.log
        dump file append = yes
        text size = 64512

[SERVER]
        host = ip
        port = 1433
        instance = instance_name

[SERVER2]
        host = ip
        port = 1433

And the tds log file:

log.c:196:Starting log file for FreeTDS 0.91
        on 2015-03-19 15:35:46 with debug flags 0x4fff.
iconv.c:330:tds_iconv_open(0xc163a0, UTF-8)
iconv.c:187:local name for ISO-8859-1 is ISO-8859-1
iconv.c:187:local name for UTF-8 is UTF-8
iconv.c:187:local name for UCS-2LE is UCS-2LE
iconv.c:187:local name for UCS-2BE is UCS-2BE
iconv.c:349:setting up conversions for client charset "UTF-8"
iconv.c:351:preparing iconv for "UTF-8" <-> "UCS-2LE" conversion
iconv.c:391:preparing iconv for "ISO-8859-1" <-> "UCS-2LE" conversion
iconv.c:394:tds_iconv_open: done
net.c:205:Connecting to 195.70.16.92 port 1433 (TDS version 7.1)
net.c:270:tds_open_socket: connect(2) returned "Operation now in progress"
net.c:306:getsockopt(2) reported: Connection timed out
net.c:316:tds_open_socket() failed
util.c:331:tdserror(0xc16140, 0xc163a0, 20009, 110)
util.c:361:tdserror: client library returned TDS_INT_CANCEL(2)
util.c:384:tdserror: returning TDS_INT_CANCEL(2)
mem.c:615:tds_free_all_results()

Of course, if I try to connect to SERVER2 (which is a non named instance) everything goes smoothly...

I finally found a solution, there were two problems :

• The SQL server wasn't listening on the good default port (my bad)
• Laravel (PDO ?) doesn't know how to handle (or at least I haven't found how) named instances, I have tried any possible combination (see Question)

So I finally used a combination of FreeTDS DSN with laravel in order to connect the SQL named instance server.

The /etc/freetds.conf DSN configuration:

[NAMED_INSTANCE]
   host = 127.0.0.1
   port = 55021

And in the laravel database adapter:

'webcmd' => array(
    'driver'   => 'sqlsrv',
    'host'     => 'NAMED_INSTANCE',
    'database' => 'db',
    'username' => 'usr',
    'password' => 'pwd',
    'prefix'   => '',
),

And that solved my problem, hope it'll help someone too