SharePoint 2016 : Resolving issue – Get-SPFarm : Can not access the local farm. Verify that local farm is properly configured, currently available, and that you have the appropriate permission to a database before you try again.

Hi All,
Greetings for the day 🙂 LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL 🙂
Today new issue and resolution 🙂
Background / Details :
- We were doing migration from On-Prem to On-Prem. From SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2016
- I am the local administrator, farm administrator on new SharePoint 2016 server
- I could access the sites / central admin from the server properly
- We were using Content DB attachment method for migration
- So as one of the step is to download the farm solution from existing environment – SharePoint 2013 and deploy on new environment – SharePoint 2016
- We have already PowerShell script available to download the farm solutions from SharePoint servers please have a look once –
- So we started PowerShell and we started deploying solutions on new environment – SP 2016. Here we are getting an error. (Tried to run PowerShell by “Run as Administrator” as well but no luck 🙁 )
- Tried Get-SPFarm CMDLET and same error
Error / Issue :
Get-SPFarm : Can not access the local farm. Verify that local farm is properly configured, currently available, and that you have the appropriate permission to a database before you try again.
Cause of an error / Why this error :
- This issue is because current use dosent have “SharePoint_Shell_Access” role on “SharePoint_Config” database
- The farm administrator (not to be confused with the farm account) does not automatically have access to the content dbs.
What is “SharePoint_Shell_Access role ?
- The secure SharePoint_SHELL_ACCESS database role on the configuration database replaces the need to add an administration account as a db_owner on the configuration database
- By default, the setup account is assigned to the SharePoint_SHELL_ACCESS database role. We can use a PowerShell command to grant or remove memberships to this role.
- Setup assigns the SharePoint_SHELL_ACCESS role to the following databases:
- The SharePoint_Config database (the configuration database).
- One or more of the SharePoint Content databases. This database is configurable by using the PowerShell command that manages membership and the object that is assigned to this role.
- Members of the SharePoint_SHELL_ACCESS role have the execute permission for all stored procedures for the database.
- Members of this role have the read and write permissions on all of the database tables.
- If we are planning to use an account to run PowerShell cmdlets on a database, so it must have a db_owner database role or SharePoint_SHELL_ACCESS database role.
- There is no need to assign a db_owner database role for an account if it already has a SharePoint_SHELL_ACCESS database role.
Solution :
- In order to use Windows PowerShell for SharePoint Products, a user must be a member of the SharePoint_Shell_Access role on the configuration database and a member of the WSS_ADMIN_WPG local group on the computer where SharePoint Products is installed.
Prerequisites to add the user to “SharePoint_Shell_Admin” role :
- Must have membership in the securityadmin fixed server role on the SQL Server instance
- Membership in the db_owner fixed database role
- Local administrative permission on the local computer.
PowerShell CMDLET to add the user to “SharePoint_Shell_Admin” role : Add-SPShellAdmin
Syntax :
Add-SPShellAdmin
[-UserName] <String>
[-AssignmentCollection <SPAssignmentCollection>]
[-Confirm]
[-Database <SPDatabasePipeBind>]
[-WhatIf]
[<CommonParameters>]
Examples :
Add-SPShellAdmin -UserName <domain name /username> => adds a new user named username to the SharePoint_Shell_Access role in the farm configuration database only, and also ensures the user is added to the WSS_Admin_WPG local group on each server in the farm
What happens behind the scene when we assign SharePoint_Shell_Access role to user :
- The user is added to the WSS_Admin_WPG group on all Web servers
- If the target database does not have a SharePoint_Shell_Access role, the role is automatically created
- On successfully execution of this cmdlet – the user specified with the UserName parameter will have the SPDataAccess role, if it exists, or db_owner role, if the SPDataAccess role does not exist, on the affected databases
Some more details :
- This cmdlet is only to be used with a database that uses Windows authentication
- There is no need to use this cmdlet for databases that use SQL authentication
- If we specify only the user, the user is added to the role for the farm configuration database
- If we use the database parameter, the user is added to the role on the farm configuration database, the Central Administration content database, and the specified database.
Thanks for reading 🙂 HAVE A GREAT TIME AHEAD 🙂
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