Sunday 22 June 2014

Issue with SharePoint 2013 Farm Update

Hi all,

Last week, I was facing lot of issue applying the SharePoint 2013 SP1 upgrade.

First, was installing the binaries on each SharePoint 2013 server.
It took me an average on 2:30 hours per server.
The only advantage is that the binaries can be installed on each Farm server at the same time.

Then, I've prepared all my SharePoint Servers (15 servers ....) with the SharePoint Configuration Wizard.

At that moment, I was facing an extreme long long long configuration time for the Wizard.

Checking the sharepoint logs, I had only lines about PowerShell doing something... time to time.


After restarting the Wizard several times, and letting the Wizard working at his own way, I discovered that using the Configuration Wizard was not the solution.
Thus, I've decided to do the configuration via the psconfig.exe.
When there is an error, it shows clearly the issue.

Thus, I've discovered that executing the configuration wizard with the Install account gave issue in the database access.
When executing the configuration wizard with the Farm account, it gave insufficent access rights to some DB.

At that point, I've asked to our SQL Team to set the Farm and the Install account as dbo (db owner) to all DB's of the Farm.

Thus, executing the configuration wizard went without any issue, and each server was configured, one by one in less than 30 minutes each.


I've asked our Microsoft consultant about this issue, and he was not aware of the problem.
I've showed him my server, and he told me (before I discover the problem) that powershell was still working, and I have to wait....


So, before installing SP1 (or CU, or PU), do not forget to double check the access rights of your farm and install account.
Doing this will save you lot of time when installing SP, CU or PU in SharePoint 2013 (and in extension for SharePoint 2010)


Voilà, I hope it'll help you saving lot of time.


Job's done.