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Sunday, October 13, 2013

Improvise #ProjectServer 2013 #CU installation time #SP2013 #PS2013 #CU

With the release of Project Server 2013 and then release of periodic Cumulative Updates, one evident factor i have experienced is the size of cumulative updates of project server, and the time they requires to be installed.

Just before this blog, a normal time i have experienced to install any CU on Project Server 2013 servers, were some where between 4-5 hrs and some time more than that as well :( and this duration is for 1 CU only, imagine if you have to install more than 1 CU which is common as March CU is a pre-requiste for any new CUs to be installed.

Which means, that either you plan to start the installation at day end, so that next day when you will resume work you only have to wait for configuration wizard to be finished
OR
you can sit idle and stare at that progress bar on your screen, moving as slowly as any slowest turtle exist on planet earth, and curse yourself that why have you started the installation at this time.

I have been look for ways to improvise the duration of installation of CU, and the good news is that there is a way to install the same CU with the duration time of between 30-45 mins ... yea you are reading it rite, its mins NOT hrs :)

Credit for this goes to Russ Maxwell, who brought this solution forward. And i am re-posting this good to spread to Project server community, because its equally painful for us as well :)

From the start the suspect in this whole case, i.e. why CU takes so long, are the SharePoint services running on the server such as App fabric/search etc. As they consume most part of CPU, and push windows installer to a lower priority to consume CPU time.

So here is a Power-Shell script to automate and speed up the installation process by disabling SharePoint server services gracefully. The scirpts performs the following steps:

  1. Disable the IISAdmin and SPTimerV4 service
  2. Shut down IIS Admin and Timer Services if they are running                                                                                                          
  3. Give you the option to Pause the Search Service Application (see search notes below)                                                                                      
  4. Stop Search Services (see search notes below)                                                                                                                                                     
  5. Install the patch in passive mode (No user interaction required but will witness the patch install in the UI). Note:  Power Shell should remain open in the background while patch is running.
  6. Upon completion of the patch, the Power Shell script, services in step 1 are set to Automatic                                                                          
  7. Starts up IIS Admin and Timer Services                                                                                                                                              
  8. Starts up Search Services                                                                                                                                                                                      
  9. Resume the Search Service Application if it was paused                                                                                                                       
  10. Finally, the script will display the Start Time and End Time for patch install

The script can be downloaded from the script gallery below:
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Server-2013-automate-and-833aeb0b

A walkthrough using the script is below:

Copy the script and CU in the same folder, note that only one CU should be placed in the folder and file extension should be .exe.

Open the power shell and run the script, i recommend to pause search service application here by choosing 1. The screen shots below are of Project Server 2013 JUN CU installation on my server:




Notice the installation time of JUN CU, 35 mins, voila :)

Happy patching.

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