[German]A quick question for the administrators among the blog readership who are responsible for Remote Desktop Server. A reader has just informed me by email that there have been problems with RDS activation since Friday, February 21, 2025. The cause is that the Microsoft Clearinghouse server is simply unavailable. It looks like an outage – are there others affected?
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What is Microsoft Clearinghouse?
Microsoft Clearinghouse is used to activate license servers and request client license key packages for RDS and install them on terminal server license servers. The Clearinghouse is ultimately a database that stores information on all activated Terminal Server license servers and issued key packages. Microsoft explains this in its Remote Desktop Services support article, which also provides telephone numbers for queries.
MS Clearinghouse server unavailable
German blog reader Andreas has contacted me by e-mail some days ago and wrote that the company where he works in IT support has had a problem with its customers since Friday, February 21, 2025, that the Microsoft Clearinghouse servers for RDS activation are no longer accessible.
This affects both Windows Server 2022 and Windows Server 2019. Andreas then states that this has been checked for all SPLA customers as well as customers with their own Open Value contract. As soon as someone tries to add new licenses, the following error message appears immediately:
The License Installation Wizard indicates that the Remote Desktop Licensing Manager has not been detected. This may be due to an unavailable website or a problem with the Internet connection.
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Andreas states that the firewall logs have been checked without success, there is nothing to indicate that a connection is being blocked. The Windows servers for RDS were then upgraded to TLS 1.2 for security reasons. But unfortunately this has no positive effects either.
There are many indications that Microsoft's clearinghouse activation servers are simply no longer accessible. Andreas has already opened a ticket with Microsoft and the matter is being investigated. Some other German administrators confirmed this issue – but today I got the first back, that the service is up again. Can this be confirmed?
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