My App-V Server 5.0.1224.0 Service Pack 1 to SP3 upgrade experience

Question

I wanted to share my upgrade experience from App-V Server 5.1.1224.0 Service Pack 1 to SP3, in case it might be of help to anyone out there.  I've been hearing that some of you have resorted to uninstalling your SP1 and installing SP3 cleanly as a fall-back,
but my OCD wouldn't allow me to do that...heh
Resources used:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn858700.aspx
http://www.applepie.se/app-v-5-0-sp3 (Thanks Nicke Kallen!)
My environment:
Remote SQL server (Management DB)
Remote SQL server (Reporting DB, SSRS, and ReportingService)
IIS server (Management service)
Publishing Servers x2 (Publishing service)
As Nicke stated in his post, SQL admins in an enterprise environment would laugh at you if you if you tried to hand them an .exe to run to perform the SQL portion of this upgrade.   The block of code that he provides in his post (link provided
above) was all that was needed to perform the SQL database portion.
Steps taken to upgrade:
Update Database
Install .NET Framework 4.5.1 on the Management server and Publishing Servers
Install the SP3 update on the Management server
Install the SP3 update on the Publishing server
After restarting IIS, everything seemed to be fine.  I was able to Publish and Unpublish packages that were already in the system, but when I attempted to add a new package I received an error stating that the computer account did not have access
to the package store.  This made no sense to me, as this permission had already been set in the past, so I double checked and it was still in place.  This lead me back to the first link I provided above, under the section titled "Check registry
keys before installing App-V 5.0 SP3 Server."  Honestly, I did read this first, but I think I was like "there's no way they didn't include this into the installation bits'" and glazed over it.
The first section titled ManagementDatabase key makes no sense to me, since I'm using a remote SQL server that doesn't have any App-V installation bits on it at all, and in an enterprise SQL permissions are not controlled
in this manner.
The second section titled ManagementService key:
The critical parts of this section are as follows:
MANAGEMENT_ADMINACCOUNT key:  Once I entered this and restarted IIS I was able to add new packages to App-V.  For this I used the service account that is bound to IIS.
MANAGEMENT_DB_SQL_INSTANCE key:  Left blank in my case, as the default instance is valid.
MANAGEMENT_DB_SQL_SERVER_NAME key:  I input the name of the remote SQL server.
The third section titled ReportingDatabase key, again, makes no sense to be since this database was pre-created by SQL admins, therefore this key does not exist on the SQL server.
The fourth section titled ReportingService key:
Since the reporting services are on the same box as the SQL server in my environment, I was able to leave these values blank, but in normal environments where these roles are separated you will want to populate these with the appropriate values.

Answer 1

Hi,
the challenging point could be the database. I don't know if 4.5 SP2 would introduce any modification to the database (and if so... how 'old' SP1 servers would deal with that), but in theory it could happen that you upgrade server 1 (that you removed from ACE
load balancing before), upgrade it and thus silently apply a change to the database.
If the still unpatched server2 connects to that DB there could be issues. 
As in Shared Cache mode a connection to the App-V servers is essential you should test that process in a test lab. Create a backup of your database, and use that along with two App-V servers to practice the migration in the lab. 
If you can't do that, find a maintenance window that is long enough run and roll back. 
Falko
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