SQL Server Standard License over written because of Report Builder Evaluation version

Question

A colleague of mine rang me today to told me that on one of our servers the SQL Server has stopped working. If he tries to run the management studio it throws and error saying The evaluation period has expired...

But the person claims that initially he installed SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard Version (licensed copy) on the server, but later on someone by mistake has installed Report Builder 3.0 enterprise evaluation version on that machine and this has caused the SQL server license to expire.

I have never heard of such a thing. I thought Report Builder was a client application and as long as the server you are connecting to is licensed you should be able to use it, but it would never affect the licensing on the server it is connecting to.

Anyway I connected to the server itself and started going through the windows log to check when the SQL Server was installed.

In window's log almost a year ago when the SQL Server was installed , all the MsiInstaller events during SQL Server installation points to a directory

C:\appstore\2008 R2 Standard\Standard Edition\x86\setup\.....

which I think indicates that it was standard edition that was installed originally, yet after the installation was finished and the sql server service started for the first time the windows log show the following:

Question 1

am I correct in concluding that even if the person thinks he installed a standard version of sql server, it was actually an enterprise evaluation version of sql server ??

Question 2

Is it possible that an Enterprise Evaluation version of Report Builder can affect License of already installed SQL Server standard and cause it to expire?

Answer 1

The person is wrong; that is clearly an Evaluation Edition install, not Standard Edition. The SKUs are all on the same ISO typically, so even if you download an ISO that says Standard Edition, you can still choose Evaluation or Express during install.

Report builder should not cause this situation; however, it could also happen if you install a Standard Edition engine, and then install Management Studio from an evaluation download (for the same or different version than the engine).

Answer 2

You were right to look at the install logs (usually % ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\xxx\Setup Bootstrap\Log) and to ignore the name of the source directory; things get mixed up easily. I think you need to dig deeper into the log files there to find something about the version as it installed from the get go.

But there's no "Enterprise Evaluation" edition of Report Builder. Report Builder is one component, usually a ClickOnce download from the web or SSRS server. It is really separate to SQL Server.

But what do you do next?

Organise a short outage, start up SQL Server Setup, Maintenance, Edition Upgrade, and put in their license key (if they don't have it check the installation media for DefaultSetup.ini and get it from there). See what happens.