New Server in the farm – Trial?

Imagine you have a working SharePoint Server Farm with a valid license. The great thing about SharePoint is that you can extend an existing farm with new servers, to split roles or increase performance/redundancy.

Now you add a new Server to the farm. So you install SharePoint, make sure it has the same patches installed as the rest of the farm, and add it to the farm by connecting it to the existing configuration database. But wait… what key did you use to install the server? Did you use the same product key as for the rest of the servers, or did you use a trial key, because it was written onto the CD?

The status of your farm, and the servers involved, can be checked in the Central Administration.

I would have imagined that the new server would get the product key from the existing farm. But as you can see, it did not!

So be careful when you extend your farm. Always use the same key you did for the other servers.