Unable to enter the Enterprise Licence on SharePoint Server 2010

Hi all,

This time, I was asked to install the Enterprise Licence into our Standard SharePoint 2010 Server test Farms.

We have 3 Farms in Test environment:

-          Collaboration Farm (4 VM)

-          Application Farm (1VM)

-          Service Farm (2 VM)

So, I tried to add the Licence Key via the Central Admin GUI, and I always got an error : “An error occurred”.

After close work with Microsoft, I set the logs into Verbose mode and reproduce the issue, and then finished by running the Microsoft Diagnostic tool for SharePoint.

Then, I got an explanation of my problem.

This issue happens when the Farm does not have enough resources or the load is too high or a combination of both (VM servers, in a test environment – less CPU and less RAM than in production), the upgrade process wants to upgrade all services (new ones for instance) and so on, on all servers.

It’ll try this 3 times, afterwards it gives a time-out as being impossible because the Farm was too busy.

Then, I’ve executed with success the proposed action, explained hereunder:

Action plan:

========

Please take all necessary measures before executing the action plan in order to be able to restore your Farm from backups.

1. Create a simple console application (code) that does nothing, just returns a success code, call it psconfig.exe (see details below)

2. Backup the original psconfig.exe and replace it with the previously created app.

3. Perform the operation (Enable Enterprise features)

4. Restore the original psconfig.exe

5. Run psconfigui.exe on all servers in the farm

Details:

If you don’t have visual studio installed you can use the compiler to create the exe file. 

Steps:  

1. Create new text file and write this piece of code:

Code sample: 

namespace customapp 

{ 

  class Program 

    { 

      static void Main(string[] args) 

        { 

          System.Environment.ExitCode = 0; 

        } 

    } 

}

2. Save the file as psconfig.cs

3. Open a command prompt by choosing “Run as administrator” 

4. Put the created file in c:\<location>

5. Navigate to C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727 folder 

6. Run the csc command giving as parameter the source file (c:\psconfig.cs) 

• e.g. C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727>csc c:\psconfig.cs

7. The file psconfig.exe will be created on path C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727>csc c:\psconfig.cs

==========================================

And that’s it!

Now, I have to plan a technical activity to add the Enterprise Licence into my production Farm.

According to Microsoft specialist, I’ll not facing the same issue as my production Farm has enough CPU/RAM.

But in case of, I have this procedure, tested and approved.

Job’s done.