I finally tested the SharePoint Server 2010 December 2010 CU package over the last couple of nights. The good news is that it actually worked (I’ve had trouble with August and October) and it has a load of fixes, particularly for the User Profile Service Application. The bad news is that it’s known to require restarting the User Profile Synchronisation Service after it completes. In my tests, I also had to temporarily re-add the Farm account as Local Admin and reboot before re-starting the service, after running the installer and the Products Configuration Wizard. It failed when I just tried to temporarily add the Farm account as local admin and log off/on again, so the reboot before re-starting the service is likely to be necessary.
UPDATE 19/2/2011: I got a comment from Spencer Harbar today (below) noting that restarting the SPTimer service is sufficient after temporarily adding the farm account as local admin. The reboot isn’t necessary to acquire the new rights although in my test I did need to reboot after running the installer.
Other bad stuff about it:
- It took forever to install and it required a reboot afterwards.
- The Products Configuration Wizard gets to step 9 of 9 quickly, then gives a % complete status. Mine was running at 10% with no new updates for about 20 minutes before it failed. After it failed, all of the installation log errors were related to the User Profile Service Application, so I rebooted and ran the Products Configuration Wizard again. This time it completed successfully fairly quickly but the Patch Status and Upgrade page in Central Admin didn’t get updated for this next run. Not sure what to make of that, but everything seemed fine except for the User Profile Service Application when I logged back on.
- I have some new FIM-related application event log errors regarding FIM workflows that I haven’t had a chance to look in to, but a Full Sync seemed to be working so they may not be important.
What I’d recommend:
- Run the installer and add the Farm account as local admin before rebooting.
- Note: per Spence’s comment, this isn’t necessary. Restarting the SPTimer service is sufficient. The installer may prompt for a reboot though.
- Run the Products Configuration Wizard, restart the User Profile Synchronisation Service (wait for it) and then remove the Farm account as local admin after it restarts successfully.
- It’s probably still not worth installing this unless you know you need it.
Update: for a more detailed consideration of these topics, check Chandima’s post, which walks through all of this step-by-step and links to much of the supporting guidance than I’ve trampled over here. 🙂
See my post on applying updates (December 2010) for a server farm. I’ve listed some info around UPS as well as step by step for updating. http://www.chandima.net/Blog/archive/2011/01/21/sharepoint-server-updates-for-sp2010-aka-cumulative-updates%E2%80%93should-i-apply-them.aspx
Hi Chandima,
Your post is of course a far superior consideration of all the topics – I was just noting my experience for those who are familiar with the general considerations and recommending adding the Farm account as local admin before rebooting after install, so as to avoid two reboots. I’ll update the post with a link to your post though now, as it’s probably going to be more useful to most people than mine!
So you know, I actually saw your post about this a few weeks ago in my RSS reader but your RSS feed is summary-only and I forgot to go back and read your post. For people like me who primarily read blogs underground, it means I never get a chance to read your posts. I know there are other reasons why people choose to truncate their feeds, like driving traffic to the site (I used to do this), but thought I’d mention why I didn’t read your post before I wrote mine! 🙂
Cheers,
Tristan
you don’t ever need to reboot after adding the farm acocunt to local admins, just restart the SPTimer service to ensure the rights are applied to the farm account.
Thanks Spence! I’ll update with this tip. I was never sure if it was the timer, the app pool or something else.