Installing Service Pack 2, Cumulative Update and PSCONFIG on a SharePoint 2010 Farm

 This is one of the activity we performed in our Production and it was successful.
 

Environment Over View

Windows 2008 R2

SharePoint 2010 SP1

Scope of Work : Need to Upgrade to SharePoint 2010 SP2 -> then need to install August 2013 Cumulative Update Package ->Reboot Server ->Run PSCONFIG

If you are applying the patch in the production farm, plan it properly and backup the DBs before applying the patch.  

For Installing CU the order is as follows

Application Servers -> Web Front End Servers -> Other servers 

Step1

First we need to download and keep the SP2 & CU in Server locations

URL for SP2 : http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39672 

URL for August CU : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2825949

Below security update is pre installed in our servers 

Security Update

How to Run

Login to Mentioned Servers with Service Account and  run the SP2 executable file located at D\\Server Location\SP2 (Assuming this is the location you kept the file) -> Wait till in completes successfully

Now run the CU executable file  located at  D\\Server Location\AUG2013CU in each servers. 

Please read this link to know more about this CU installation 

After installing SP2 and CU each server, run the Post Setup Configuration Wizard in the Application server

Then execute the PSCONFIG command on each servers. Please  run PSCONFIG on one server at a time and this needs to run as administrator from the command prompt.

PSCONFIG command mentioned below

PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures
 

or  

PSConfig.exe –cmd upgrade –inplace b2b –wait -force

 
Execute PSCONFIG from directory location : C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN 

Whenever we use PSConfig wizard , it will issue a timer job to do the upgrade, notice that in the command line version there are two parameters –wait and –force, -wait means do not issue a timer job instead do the upgrade directly, -force will remove any timer jobs stuck while running PSConfig wizard previously.

If there are any issues you will get more information about the exact exception from the PSConfig Setup logs from the 14/logs/ folder.

Note : Generally we can validate whether to run PSCONFIG in any Farm by giving below command from Power shell (Run as Administrator)

 (get-spserver $env:computername).NeedsUpgrade

If result is true -> then need to run PSCONFIG
If result is false->then no need to run PSCONFIG  

How to Validate our Installation

First check the version number of your SharePoint Server farm.  

a) Open Central Administration -> System Settings -> Manage Servers in this farm (under servers) 

This page will list out all servers with the details of language packs, services and the configuration database version. Status column will inform you whether we need any further action or not in any of the servers (eg: if you haven’t run the PSConfig wizard)

b) Next step is checking the upgrade status.

Central Administration -> Upgrade and Migration -> Check upgrade status.

c) Next step is review the database status

Central Administration -> Upgrade and Migration -> Check upgrade status.

d) Next step is check the product and patch installation status

Central Administration -> Upgrade and Migration -> Check product and patch installation status.

e) Run Stsadm –o localupgradestatus

This is to get the complete information for successful upgrades. You have to run it as an administrator in all SharePoint Servers in the farm.

f) Once all tests are done then test SharePoint sites, service applications etc. 

For more information click on below link

Updates for SharePoint 2010 Products 

Good Luck and Happy Patching :-) 

Issues Observed After SP2 & August CU Update

1) In one of WFE Server we are seeing several errors related to Blob Caching in the ULS Logs / Application Events

An error occurred in the blob cache. The exception message was: 'The system cannot find the file specified. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070002)

Critical Error : 5538

It seems to be a known bug associated with the SP2 Package and as per MS this will get fixed by next CU release. We are thinking about some troubleshooting like Flushing the Blob cache etc.

Will update soon !!!!!