Troubleshooting: Database Connection Error in the UMS Administrator CLI with AD Native Authentication

This article explains how to resolve failures when running Universal Management Suite (UMS) Administrator Command Line Interface (CLI) commands in environments using Active Directory (AD) native authentication.


System Environment

  • Windows Server

  • AD native SQL authentication

Symptoms

The command in CLI fails with:

E-1000: Unable to connect to database. UMS server may be down.

Error message: Database connection error!

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Problem

  • AD authentication does not propagate when the script is called with another user.

  • Must run from rmadmin directory.

  • UAC may break integrated authentication.

Solution

Verify Active Directory Permissions

The umsadmin-cli tool must be executed as the AD user itself. Running the command as a local administrator account will not work.

Ensure that the AD account used to execute the umsadmin-cli command has the required permissions:

  • SQL Integrated Authentication must be allowed if the UMS relies on integrated AD authentication for the database connection.

  • The user of the CLI must be in the AD group with database access.

  • The AD user must have permission to execute local scripts on the server.

In certain environments, launching umsadmin-cli as an AD user may cause a new Command Prompt window to briefly appear and close immediately. This behavior is related to User Account Control (UAC).

To bypass this, you can temporarily disable UAC using this script:

reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

After running the command as an administrator and rebooting the server, the AD user should be able to run umsadmin-cli normally without the additional command window appearing.

Disabling UAC reduces system security and should only be done in controlled environments or for troubleshooting purposes.