I built a Configuration Manager (MEMCM) lab in August 2020 as a means to learn more about it and assembled a desktop especially for the same purpose (and maybe a little bit of gaming as well). A couple of months later, I decided to move back to my hometown as we had an option to work from home, and obviously, I couldn’t move back with my desktop.
Fast forward 6 months, and here I am, back to my workplace. Among other things, I was most excited about getting back to my lab. I was aware that the trial for the OS and Configuration Manager must have expired, but was curious to know what would happen if I try to run it.
Starting off with the OS license, this was pretty much expected as a visual indication.
Moving on, the next step was to launch the MEMCM Console. I wasn’t expecting much and surely, the console was stuck while loading.
In my experience, whenever the console is having some trouble, it probably has something to do with the Database. The next step was to check the SMSProv.log file. We can see in the below snippet that there is some problem connecting with the SQL Database.
In my lab setup, both Configuration Manager and the SQL Database are co-located, so I could directly check what the issue is on the same server. When I opened SSMS and tried to connect to the database, it gave the same error.
The next step was to check whether SQL services are running or not, so I opened SQL Server Configuration Manager. As you can see, the services were in a “Stopped” state.
When I tried to start the service, it gave an error and directed me towards the Event logs.
Finally, the event log clearly mentioned the reason behind the issue, which was an expired SQL license.
Although it was expected that Configuration Manager would not work, it was interesting to find out how exactly it would fail. Looking forward to building a new MEMCM lab now!
