Installation Procedure for SharePoint 2010 SP1

Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 is a welcome relief to resolve a number of issues as well as add a number of new features. Office Web Apps SP1 also looks to bring enhancements and stability.

The real nightmare behind SP1 was a very quick release of June 2011 Cumulative Update to resolve FIM issues in SP1, and there were bugs in the update that required it to be re-released – all but making the SP1 deployment process something from a Stephen King novel.

I have done a fair amount of reading online, both from Microsoft and SharePoint MVPs, I have also done my own amount of testing on replica environments of our live system. Taking in to account my own experience with SharePoint, I will be following this process to update my 3 tier farm (1 Web Front End Server, 1 Application Server, 3 SQL Server in a mirror with a witness):

Create backups and test their restore to a test farm

• Run a full SharePoint 2010 backup
• Run a full SQL Server backup of all databases

Stop any services that could interrupt the install process:

• Disable SQL Server Maintenance plan that runs every 30 minutes to backup the transaction log for all databases
• Stop the Search Service Incremental Index crawler

Run the installs on the Application Server:

• Install SharePoint 2010 Foundation SP1
• Install SharePoint 2010 Server SP1
• Install Office Web Apps SP1
• Reboot the Server

We need to ensure all the databases are updated to the same version as the installed binaries:

• Run the SharePoint 2010 Product Configuration Wizard on the Application Server
• Run the SharePoint 2010 Product Configuration Wizard on the Web Front End Server

Run the installs on the Application Server:

• Install SharePoint 2010 Foundation June 2011 Cumulative Update
• Install SharePoint 2010 Server June 2011 Cumulative Update
• Reboot the Server

We need to ensure all the databases are updated to the same version as the installed binaries:

• Run the SharePoint 2010 Product Configuration Wizard on the Application Server
• Run the SharePoint 2010 Product Configuration Wizard on the Web Front End Server

Final Reboot

• I found that I needed to do a reboot on my second set of testing as the UPS wouldn’t run as it thought it the server was in a shutting down state
• It did have to do this a few days on the first set of testing I did

If you have the User Profile Service running, I think I read somewhere that you need to restart it:

• Open Central Administration, and go to Manage Services on this Server
• If the User Profile Synchronization Service is running, select Stop
• Start the User Profile Synchronization Service, providing your Farm Admin credentials
• Close Central Administration
• Run IISReset from a Command Prompt

Assuming all the installs and wizards have run successfully, I would recommend rerunning your backups:

• Run a full SharePoint 2010 backup
• Run a full SQL Server backup of all databases

With successful backups, you can re-enable your services:

• Enable SQL Server Maintenance plan that runs every 30 minutes to backup the transaction log for all databases
• Start the Search Service Incremental Index crawler

Run a UPS full sync:

• Run a UPS full sync, as I started to get Event ID 5555 errors. This blog post refers to some stsadm commands to run, however I found that a full sync cleaned up the errors for me

Check Upgrade status:

• I won’t print out all the checks to run, as you can verify your update success via this Microsoft Technet article.

UPDATE: When you run the installs, somewhere along the line (probably SP1), the CEIP Data Collection Timer Job is enabled. This can kick up errors if it wasn’t previosuly enabled due to DCOM permissions. You will need to go to Central Administration, then under Monitoring and select Job Definitions to find CEIP Data Collection, and to Disable it if you continue in not wanting to send SharePoint reports off to Microsoft. I found that CEIP had been enabled on the SharePoint Central Administration Web Application, so under Manage Web Applications in Central Administration, select the Central Administration Web Application and select General Settings and at very bottom of the list, you can turn off CEIP without having to disable the Timer job. I also noticed that I hadn’t set the Time Zone and was wondering why (all of a sudden), the UPS log file showed the import results 2 hours behind the current time here in Cape Town.

UPDATE: I wouldn’t run any backups after the SP1 installations if you intend to apply the Cumulative Updates straight after – it seems to cause a little mess with the UPS (as the backups stop the UPS services and restarts them and the backup failed).

UPDATE: According to this blog post, the user runs the updates on the Web Front End first and then the Application servers – I was going to do it the other way round, but have updated by order above to conform with theirs.

UPDATE: This Microsoft Technet article also recommends upgrading your Web Front End servers first. It also confirms that you should run the SharePoint 2010 Product Configuration Wizard on the Application Servers first, then the Web Front End servers.

The above blog post also provides at the very least a base checklist of items to test after SP1 and the Cumulative Update are applied:

1. Edit and View Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote documents in the browser
2. View My Sites
3. Test User Profile Synchronization
4. Tag Pages and check for tags in Newsfeed
5. View a Visio Web Access Drawing in the Browser
6. Work in an Access Web Database site
7. Add an obscure word to a page or document, do an incremental search crawl, and search for the word
8. Add terms and/or term sets to the Managed Metadata store
9. View Reporting Services Reports (or Access Web Database Reports)

Depending on how successful the above went, how clean your Event Logs are, and generally how brave you are, you can now install the June 2011 Cumulative Update following the same process as above – backup, install the Foundation update followed by the Server update, reboot, run PSConfig, re-provision the User Profile Service, backup and then re-enabled disabled services.

Microsoft seem to recommend installing the SP1 and Cumulative Update at the same time – I would prefer to get a stable backup in between the installation of the updates so if something fails, you only have to go back halfway and not end up starting from the very beginning.

My advice is do this on a weekend, preferably a Saturday if you can, then you have an extra day in case something goes wrong. Secondly. you won’t be rushed if doing this on a weekday. I will be doing mine next weekend as long as no mishaps show up between now and then. I will let you know if I go with the Cumulative Update.

UPDATE: Since applying the updates, SharePoint does seem snappier and more stable - I havent tested Google Chrome support but I have played with Sub Site Recycle Bin restores and that works aplomb!

3 Comments

• 
  Michael Spinler
  August 14, 2011 at 07:11

  Nice write up. Thanks!

  Reply
• 
  Ponnarasu
  November 10, 2011 at 04:03

  Hi ,

  Please suggest me . I have 4 servers (i.e. 2 wfe and 2 app). So can you tell me . whether i can install in sp1 ,language pack and cu in all the 4 server at a time ( i.e installing parallely ) or sequentially installing is the correct approach ( i.e. completing one server after installing on the other server). please tell me . I’m damn struck on this.

  Reply
  • 
    demonRICHARD
    November 11, 2011 at 19:39

    I took the sequential approach by installing SP1 and runing PSConfig and then CU with PSConfig again, but you think you can do all in one go then just run PSConfig once. It took a long time to do it sequentially, so if you are limited on time then it might be best to do all in one go.

    Do you have a test environment to test with first?

    Reply