Good practices on updating Sharepoint

Question

Currently in the company I work we have a SharePoint Server 2010 with the last update applied being from July/2013(Service Pack 2)

Reference: Service Pack 2

We are looking to upgrade our environment to the update of August/2015, just because it's our father company already validated.

Reference: August/2015 Update

This will be my first time doing that so I was wondering what good practices should I adopt, or for a reference on that. Despite, of course, of doing it in test environments before production.

A few questions.

1. If something goes wrong, is it possible to rollback the update?

2. How can I find out exactly what is being updated? Meaning what are the improvements etc

3. Do I need a reboot of the system?

Thanks in advance.

edit: found the last 2 answers in the documentation - duh.

Answer 1

rolling back the SharePoint updates are not supported, due to the fact it is not only installed on the server but also update the content database schemas.

As per my experience and best practice in the market.

• I would apply the update in the Lower farm( test farm, may be copy the data from production server to get real time testing).
• Test all the required functionality, couple of time to make sure everything is working after the update.

For production rollout

• Schedule a down time, as updating farm require a down time( restart & iisreset).
• Take the full backup of the farm or take the backup of content Databases & services db. Because in case of disaster you have to rebuild the farm.
• Now Apply the Update on sharepoint server
• Run the Config wizard on all server in the farm
• test it.

Answer 2

SharePoint does not support uninstalling SharePoint patches of any kind. Best bet is to create database backups and if worse comes to worse, build a new farm and restore service application/content databases. It is always best to build SharePoint with PowerShell for repeatability in case you need to do a rebuild. You could also take a SharePoint Full Farm backup (this includes applicable databases, as well) for an easier time to restore.

Last thing you can do is shut down the SharePoint servers and SQL Servers, then take a snapshot if they're virtual machines. Just make sure to delete the snaps as soon as possible.

That said, I'd open a support case with Microsoft prior to attempting to restore.