Observability

"Configuring Certificate Management FAILED" Error in Configuration Wizard when SQL Listener resolves incorrectly in SolarWinds Platform 2024.4 and above

This article provides information about an error in the Configuration Wizard where configuring certificate management in 2024.4 and above is failing when using Availability Groups, and the SQL listener resolves to the inactive IP.

First published date

7/2/2025 7:43 PM

Last published date

7/8/2025 11:45 PM

Overview

The Configuration Wizard fails with an error:

Configuring Certificate Management FAILED

Services configuration failed:
    •  Status(StatusCode="Unavailable", Detail="Error starting gRPC call. HttpRequestException: An error occurred while sending the request. WebException: Unable to connect to the remote server SocketException: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 127.0.0.1:17732", DebugException="System.Net.Http.HttpRequestException: An error occurred while sending the request.")

 

Looking at the Certificate Management logs in C:\ProgramData\SolarWinds\Logs\CertificateManagement, we can see:

SolarWinds.CertificateManagement.Service.Services.WaitForDependenciesService - (null)  Dependencies were not ready.
Microsoft.Data.SqlClient.SqlException (0x80131904): A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - The wait operation timed out.)
---> System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (258): The wait operation timed out.

 

Pinging the SQL listener revealed that it is resolving to the IP address of a secondary (inactive) replica, instead of the current primary (active) node.

Product section

SolarWinds Observability

Cause

The user is using Availability Groups and SQL listener is resolving to the inactive IP.

Resolution

SQL listener resolution is environment-specific and should be reviewed by the DNS team to ensure the listener resolves to the active SQL node.

As a temporary workaround, you can manually override DNS resolution by editing the hosts file on the server where the Configuration Wizard is being run.

  1. Go to Start > run Notepad.
  2. Right-click on the Notepad icon and select Run as administrator.
  3. Select File > Open.
  4. Select All Files (*.*) from the file type drop-down.
  5. Browse to c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc
  6. Open the hosts file.
  7. Add the host name and IP address to the bottom of the host file. The comments in this file show how to format this entry.

    For example:
    8.8.8.8 hostname   (Most common syntax)
    or
    8.8.8.8    fqdn   hostname
    (Commonly used, when is required to access and external site fqdn, that is different to the internal site, and where DNS is not available).

  8. Save the hosts file.