SharePoint patches install and rollback

Question

_{Friday, May 19, 2017 4:18 PM}

Hi,

we have come across a situation where the SharePoint language pack hotfixes got installed automatically on few of the SharePoint servers in the farm via the windows update. we could see that the versions table in SharePoint Config database is  showing up with the latest patch version value. We want to revert back to the old SharePoint patch version. what we have done till now is the following -

1> uninstall the language pack on the affected servers.

2> re-installed the language packs on those servers

3> restored the old SharePoint configuration database backup where the versions table was showing the correct latest version which we are looking to revert to

4> re-ran the configuration wizard and the run was successful. The site is coming up properly without any issues.

Can anybody explain if this is the correct way to handle this situation or is it advisable to go ahead and rebuild the SharePoint server by disconnecting it from the farm.

regards,

SSM

All replies (2)

_{Friday, May 19, 2017 7:35 PM}

Important thing is you made this work and sites are up & running. But, language patches are sometimes required even though you might not have language pack installed on the farm. we run into issues after Oct feature pack for SP2016 and the fix was language patch.

Anyhow, most people would have done same step you did for restoring old farm. 

_{Friday, May 19, 2017 7:38 PM}

What you're doing is unsupported.

1) You cannot uninstall a patch from a farm. Once it's installed, it's recorded in the Config database.

2) You cannot restore the Administration nor Configuration database.

Prior to patching, I'd recommend taking a full farm backup or database backup. You can then create a new farm and restore Service Application and Content Database backups.

Trevor Seward

Office Servers and Services MVP

Author, Deploying SharePoint 2016

This post is my own opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion or view of Microsoft, its employees, or other MVPs.