Today one of my Clients wanted to add a server to the farm and had forgot the Farm passphrase . it had been a day and he was not able to find the right one . He had not documented the same .
We tried researching on how to retrieve the Passphrase however were not able to find the right Solution . May be its possible to pull from the sql server after running some Query however was not able to find one
I Came to know that there is no way to lookup the Passphrase in the Database and the only way is to reset the Passphrase and without a valid database or SQL connection this is not possible .
The Best way i could find is to Reset the passphrase using the Powershell commands .
Start => All Programs => Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products => SharePoint 2010 Management Shell right click the link and run as administrator.
At the PowerShell prompt input
$passphrase = ConvertTo-SecureString -asPlainText –Force
You will be asked to input a new passphrase in plain text.
Set-SPPassPhrase -PassPhrase $passphrase –Confirm
After inputting the command above you will be asked to reenter the new passphrase
Enter Y = Yes N = No to complete the change.
Once it is done run the Wizard. and you will be able to add the server to the farm with the new passphrase .
It may Happen that you may get some error related to Sql . At this point of time as you have lost the connectivity with Sql
Check for all the permissions of the account you are logged in with on the sql . At times still it would not connect . then the only thing is disconnect the server from the farm and reconnect it
Note : If you know how or if you have any Idea of retrieving the Passphrase Please share .
We tried researching on how to retrieve the Passphrase however were not able to find the right Solution . May be its possible to pull from the sql server after running some Query however was not able to find one
I Came to know that there is no way to lookup the Passphrase in the Database and the only way is to reset the Passphrase and without a valid database or SQL connection this is not possible .
The Best way i could find is to Reset the passphrase using the Powershell commands .
Start => All Programs => Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products => SharePoint 2010 Management Shell right click the link and run as administrator.
At the PowerShell prompt input
$passphrase = ConvertTo-SecureString -asPlainText –Force
You will be asked to input a new passphrase in plain text.
Set-SPPassPhrase -PassPhrase $passphrase –Confirm
After inputting the command above you will be asked to reenter the new passphrase
Enter Y = Yes N = No to complete the change.
Once it is done run the Wizard. and you will be able to add the server to the farm with the new passphrase .
It may Happen that you may get some error related to Sql . At this point of time as you have lost the connectivity with Sql
Check for all the permissions of the account you are logged in with on the sql . At times still it would not connect . then the only thing is disconnect the server from the farm and reconnect it
Note : If you know how or if you have any Idea of retrieving the Passphrase Please share .
