Issues when upgrading Portal from 11.5 to 12.1 - 'Failed to configure languages content during an upgrade'

Question

When upgrading Portal from 11.5 to 12.1 the upgrade fails.

In the logs I can see the message 'Reindexing operation failed for languages '

The upgrade continues and in the penultimate entry in the log says that the upgrade has completed.

However from the Portal Administrator Directory in the browser it is evident that the upgrade has failed.

3 tasks have not started and they never start. The Portal can not be accessed.

Has anyone had the same issue?

Thanks

tomshewring · Answer

Thanks David,

These are the steps I have followed to get Portal upgraded from 11.5 to 12.1

Without ESRI support -
1 - restored to 11.5 after aborting 12.1 upgrade

2 - removed Portal for ArcGIS Security 2026 Update 2 Patch from 11.5

3 - paused windows Defender / Anti virus

With ESRI support 
1- our deployment was missing 3 languages (their status was 'false' in <url>/portal/portaladmin/system/content/languages)

2 - added the three missing languages bg, sk, ukr

3 - reindexed

Portal upgrade to 12.1 then completed ok

Hosting ArcGIS server upgrade completed ok

But Datastore upgrade failed –

1 – I installed Data store 12.1

2 – I installed the patch - https://support.esri.com/en-us/patches-updates/2026/arcgis-data-store-12-1-relational-store-upgrade-patch

3 – I ran the Data store configuration and got the following errors

Attempt to configure data store failed.

Caused by: Database upgrade failed for relational store.

Caused by: Failed to start relational store.

Caused by: Connection timed out while waiting for relational store machine to start.

DavidColey · Answer

This happened to us in an earlier upgrade where languages update did not complete:

In April of 2024 during our upgrade from 11.1 > 11.2, language pack updates would not complete:

My support case description:

Issue Description:

Hello - I just upgraded to 11.2 from 11.1 and now my Instant apps configuration page will not display instant app choices. NONE of my existing 11.1 Instant apps will display for configuration and I cannot update them. The configuration choice from the app overview page just shows a spinning gif. The Instant app page is not found.

This was the resolution after about a month:

BUG-000167282 has been created and attached to this case. Ran the associated specialized SQL query workflows in C:\arcgisportal\pgsql14.x\bin to disable language packs from the command prompt and re-enable languages from Portaladmin. Tested initial results at the Portal endpoint and found content to be restored.

We had to make back-end command lines edits to the portals' gwdb in order to properly upgrade the language packs so that Intstant Apps would be available.

I did not encounter this going from 11.5>12.0 or 12.0>12.1 - but I can tell you that the 12.1 release contains more Internationaliztion updates to handle extended translation capability for the built-in Instant Apps and Experience Builders