Patching hell SP2 + CU2

  • We have a SQL 2014 AlwaysOn cluster (3 nodes) that has had issues with patching to SP2 + CU2. There are 4 instance on this cluster. After installing SP2 + CU2, the 4th instance would not start.

    Check the SQLServer_Errorlog : C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\120\Setup Bootstrap\Log\<20161126_174353>

    2016-11-26 17:46:44.00 Server Version mismatch between files 'D:\XXX\SYSTEMDB\MSSQL12.XXX\MSSQL\Binn\sqlservr.exe' (12.0.5000) and 'D:\XXX\SYSTEMDB\MSSQL12.XXX\MSSQL\Binn\sqldk.dll' (12.0.5522).

    2016-11-26 17:46:44.00 Server SQL Server shutdown has been initiated

    So my colleague uninstalled CU2 then uninstalled SP2 (only the 4th instance since the others were working), and then reinstalled each. For some reason this worked. I believe for the initial failed update he used the unattended installation (command line) method with the /AllInstances param. The second time to fix it he ran the updates manually (update wizard gui).

    What would cause a patch to fail on 1 of 4 instances like this? Could there be a bug in the unattended installation method? Are there any sanity checks that could be done before starting the patching? Anything to ensure a clean patching process? We still need to proceed with the other two servers in the cluster.

    Here's our patching process:

    restart server (ensure no pending restarts needed)

    run SP2

    restart server

    run CU2

    restart server

    Note: patching on DEV servers (standalone instances) and QA (standalone + AlwaysOn) all went absolutely perfectly.

    any advice greatly appreciated!

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