SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

The last 2 SharePoint 2010 systems I have looked at have displayed the “Action Required” status for one or more servers in the farm in the “Manage Servers in this Farm” page, which is normally caused by incorrect server patching.

When you apply a Service Pack or CU to your SP2010 farm, you are normally looking at performing a quite straight forward 3 stage process.

Stage 1: Obtain patch:

Download the latest Service Pack or CU from here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff800847#LatestUpdates or use the “Use this page to view the latest patch status for products installed on servers in the farm” link on the CA site in Central Administration > Manage Patch Status

Stage 2: Install Patch

Once you have your Service Pack or CU, you will need to run it on each of the servers in your SharePoint Farm that has the SharePoint binaries installed, there is no special order to do this, but personally I like to run the patch on each WFE in turn, then on the application servers.

Once the patch has installed you will normally be prompted to run the Config wizard, if you are working on a single server farm, run the Config Wizard at this point, if you are working with a multi server farm cancel the Config Wizard and run the patch on each server on your farm.

Stage 3: Config Wizard

If you are running a single server system and have followed the instructions in stage 2, you should be finished. If you are running a multi-server farm you now need to run the Config Wizard to finalize the patch install. I like to run the wizard on the 1st server I patched and let it run to completion, then run the wizard on the rest of the servers in the farm, again there is no particular order to this but personally I like to run the wizard in the same order as I patched the servers, Once finished a quick reboot all round and we are done, and your status should be “No Action Required”