SQL Server – Blue Icon with Question Mark Meaning

sql serversql-server-2016

The SQL Server instance is accessible and seems to be fine.

Microsoft SQL Server 2016 (SP1-CU2) (KB4013106) – 13.0.4422.0 (X64)
Mar 6 2017 14:18:16 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation Enterprise
Edition (64-bit) on Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard 6.3 (Build
9600: ) (Hypervisor)

But what does the white question mark mean?

these icons dont go away when I refresh.
I am sysadmin inside sql server and outside I am administrator on that box.

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Another thing I noticed, you can see on the picture below.
These are 2 different Management Studio sessions.

On the top one, I am logged in as myself, DBA and sysadmin, on the second one
I use Management Studio with run as a different user and I use a domain account that I use for the replication, which is not sysadmin.

The second one has the blue icon in this and other servers as well, whilst mine is the normal green one.

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Best Answer

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