Blue icon with question mark - what does it mean?
Enabling these Windows Firewall rules did the trick for me
- Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI-In)
- Windows Management Instrumentation (DCOM-In)
These two rules are predefined and you can enable them by right clicking and enabling these rules in Windows Firewall advanced settings
I Also opened port 135 in the windows firewall, but I don't know if this was really neccessary.
I now confirmed it for Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019 and SQL Server 2017
I believe the blue question mark indicates that SSMS does not know if the service is running or not, by way of a WMI call. I'm quite certain this icon replaced the blank or white circle icon of prior SSMS versions.
After some digging, it looks like you could run into one or more issues causing this behavior, as follows:
- See if TCP port 135 to the server is open or not on your firewall? If it's not, opening it up may resolve this icon, but understand that there are also some special considerations to be aware of when enabling this port. Normally, this isn't a big deal if the server is not exposed to the perimeter of your network, but if your firewall rules are very restrictive or this server sits in a DMZ, this may be something you have to live with.
- Your user may not have proper permissions to view the service state remotely. To enable those permissions, follow the instructions here.
- WMI services are not running on the server hosting the database engine. Start the WMI services via services.msc, etc.
Root cause: User Groups doesn't seem to exist on the current server. Thus, sql server error log shows "Login failed for user 'strsDataAndQueues'. Reason: Failed to open the explicitly specified database 'StrsData'"
Solution: Add-on Administrator groups which does not exist on the current server
Steps:
Open Computer Management on both the servers i.e. server A and server B
Click on System Tools, scroll down to Local Users and Groups, Click on Groups
Right click Administrators, and choose Properties
Compare Administrators group between server A and server B
Add-ons Administrator group which is not available in server B