When a server with iSCSI volumes reboots, it is possible that the file shares will be missing. This is caused by the server service starting before the iSCSI Initiator is finished starting.
To solve the problem, add a persistant or bound volume in the iSCSI Initiator for the drive that has the missing shares.
Alternatively, you can manually restart the server service and the shares will be recreated.
Like with most service packs, I like to run tests before installing. If the service pack is for a mission critical application such as Exchange or SharePoint I make it a point to clone my environment and run the tests on a copy of my production system.
The SP2 service packs for SharePoint 2007 came out several weeks ago so it was time to test everything. I basically recreated my domain, the web front end and the SQL DBs for my main SharePoint installation – it’s always good disaster recovery practice, in any case :). The environment was (thankfully) 100% virtual so I could work with snapshots.
I started with the WSS update which during step 8 of 9 in the configuration wizard died on me with a link to the log. In the log I found the error:
“The B2B upgrader timer job failed”
There was lots of info on Google but nothing which helped. Since it was 100% virtual I could return to the original state after every failed attempt and try something different. I tried every suggestion I could find but no amount of stopping services, removing content DBs or disabling solutions helped.
Of course, the answer ended up being a lot less complicated than I had thought. I had an old web application which I had used for testing something a long time ago and, naturally, I hadn’t reproduced the content DBs when I was building my test environment. I deleted the old web application, retried the update and it ran like a dream.
Happy days!
