Configuration Manager can’t connect to the administration service

The configuration manager console can’t connect to the site database through the administration service on server

I am looking to test out one or two features which rely on MECM’s Administration Service so was somewhat disappointed when I got the error above whenever I clicked on the respective nodes. Mine is a fully PKI environment and my initial suspicion was that it was certificate-related. Having spent several hours tinkering with the certificates and messing with IIS and getting nowhere I decided to sleep on it…

The first thing I noticed was that the SMS_REST_PROVIDER.log hadn’t logged anything for over a month so something must be broken. I went to the SMS_REST_PROVIDER component on the server with the SMS Provider role and noticed I was unable to query/start the component. Looking at the status messages, it was constantly trying to reinstall and failing. A little more detective work and I found a possible lead to DCOM security, so I opened DCOMCNFG, expanded Component Services, expanded Computers, and then expanded My Computer. First red flag I saw was that there was clearly an error ‘bang’ on the My Computer icon. Anyway, I persevered and right-clicked it and selected MSDTC whereby I got an error:

“The remote server has been paused or is in the process of being started.”

This lead me to another post which was talking about a cluster configuration which was receiving the same error message. This got me thinking…I don’t have a cluster, what’s this on about? Anyway, I went back and checked the MECM box and it transpired I did have an old cluster I’d set up ages ago which I’d forgotten about and had since deleted one of the nodes! This was no longer required, so I simply ran a couple of Powershell commands:

Remove-Cluster -force

Remove-windowsFeature failover-clustering -restart

After restarting. I checked DCOMCNFG and the My Computer icon no longer had the bang in place. Nice. Looked at the console but still no joy. It was still telling me the Admin Service was unavailable 🙁

I nonetheless sensed I was close. I went back to the DCOMCNFG applet and went down to the Distributed Transaction Coordinator node, under which there is another node called Local DTC. I right-clicked this and went to the security tab. I was interested to see whether the DTC logon account was correct. Unfortunately, it was (it should be NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService by the way). Another dead end. This time however I tried selecting the Network DTC Access check box. and opened up the MECM console again. I clicked on the Console extensions node and this time there was a short pause and everything appeared!

One weird thing I noticed. I was able to uncheck the Network DTC Access check box and my admin service seems to remain in place without error. I will monitor this but seems that it just needed temporary access here from my observations at present.

UPDATE:

Following the above, I found that a remote console I was using kept crashing. I had to add the Network DTC Access check box before it would load correctly. Further, it appears this checkbox should be kept checked as the console will begin to crash again when opened without it over time.