WARNING: Portal for ArcGIS Validation and Repair Process takes a long time!

[David_Brooks]

Just a warning to all portal admins looking to run the Portal for ArcGIS Validation and Repair tool. It takes a VERY long time. Ours has been running for 4 hours so far, and it's rolled back 4 of 7 patches so far. Will update once complete.

[ManojK]

Please reply to this thread if you hear anything from ESRI. I actually started the repair tool wizard which showed 23 patches to uninstall and  terminated it after 1 hr after realizing that its taking too long for just one patch to uninstall. Ofcourse, ESRI mentioned about 10.8.1 taking too long but wonder if its actually doing anything as there was no progress seen.

[sahook1]

Hi Manoj, I am here to see the feedback for 10.8.1, Did you repaired your portal? If yes, any issues during the process or anything we need to consider during the validation and repair?

Your input would be very helpful for me, thanks in advance.

[ManojK5]

Hello @sahook1 , I will attempt to run the validation repair tool tomorrow and then provide my inputs. After seeing this thread, my guess is that it might take a while to uninstall all those patches and I have like 22 of them. I would have to uninstall these . so, I can plan to upgrade my application to 10.9.1 without much issues.

[EricKrause01]

Just FYI, I will be attempting to run 10.8.1 and 10.9.1. Validation and Repair tools starting tonight at EOB.  I plan to let them run through Easter Sunday.  If they have not succeeded at that point, I will be rolling them back using a VM Snapshot.  I'm less than impressed with Esri's response at this point.  Support doesn't seem to know how long these tools should take to run.

[sahook1]

Thanks Eric for the Update, Please let us know your observations during the entire process, It will be very helpful for us.

[StephenM01]

I ran this tool yesterday and for a while it didn't look like it was doing anything. I found this thread when researching to see if it was expected behavior or if anyone reported similar experiences.

I let the tool run and the first progress was shown after a little over 2 hours when the first patch was uninstalled. The tool completed successfully after about 12 hours. For context, this was a single-machine deployment of 10.9.1 and the tool uninstalled 8 patches.

[AngelaYan1720]

Just FYI, I ran the tool on a single machine deployment of 10.9.1 for 24 hours. It was stuck at uninstalling 2nd of the 7 patches. I restarted the machine and tried again, and now it says there are 5 more patches to uninstall. I may have to roll back using a VM Snapshot if still no progress overnight.

[EricKrause01]

My experience for 10.8.1 and 10.9.1 were quite different.

For my 10.9.1 single machine installation, it had to remove 7 patches and took approximately 4 hours.

For my 10.8.1 single machine installation, it had to remove 15 patches. 

It took 2.5 hours to uninstall "Portal for ArcGIS Security 2023 Update 1 Patch B"  At that point, the machine rebooted itself.  I restarted the process. 

It then took an additional 2.5 hours to uninstall "Portal for ArcGIS Security 2023 Update 1 Patch A" and rebooted the server yet again.  I restarted the process. 

It took about 1.5 hours to uninstall "Portal for ArcGIS Security 2022 Update 2 Patch" and rebooted the server again.  I restarted the process.

Finally, it took about 7 hours to uninstall the remaining patches (no further automatic reboots).

The overall time for 10.8.1 was 13.5 hours.

Then, the revised patches had to be installed.  It took about 1.25 hours to install the patches on 10.9.1.  It took 4.25 hours to install the patches on 10.8.1.  No complaints from users on this Monday morning yet... 

Hope this helps someone with understanding how long of a patching window to plan for.

[KaseyCox]

Hi @EricKrause01, do you recall if you re-installed patches released prior to 12/2023?  After running Validate and Repair, the Patch Notification tool shows 7 Available Updates, 5 of which were released prior to 12/2023 (earilest released 7/2021).  

[DamianoMontrasio]

Hi.

Last night we have planned a new patching after the first one on March 6 

For 10.9.1 I've notice a new file for Validation tool:

And yesterday patch to remove was 6 compared to 7 on the first patching.

Nov, after about 10 hours there's no activity apparently.

@esri can I be assured that one patch has actually been removed? Do I terminate the application and re-run the validation tool to see if the patches to be removed are down to 5?

I'm still waiting, but if anyone has suggestions.