sprocsSchemaVersion must not be null – SharePoint 2016 Upgrade

You may run across this error.  I inadvertently did.  It happens when the content database upgrade process fails expectantly and then the Mount-ContentDatabase won't execute the upgrade again because it thinks it is already upgraded. Unfortunately, this is a catastrophic failure and will require you to restore your Content database and rerun the content database upgrade. 

How did I run into this?  Well, I opened many powershell windows to be "multi-threaded" in my upgrade and the upgrade code didn't like that at all.  It complained about a shared log file and killed off half the threads.  I guess you shouldn't fire that off more than one instance like you could in 2013 and 2010!

Be sure you always backup your databases before you upgrade in case you need to rollback!
Chris 

Action 16.1.1.0 of Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.Database.Extension.Upgrade.PDEUpgradeSequence failed – SharePoint 2016 Upgrade

What a crazy error. 

There are a few posts about this but very little that tell you what is going on.  When you attempt to upgrade the farm with the following command (after applying a public update or even after the 2016 upgrade):

PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -force -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures -cmd secureresources

You could get the above error in one of the final upgrade stepsactions.  Psconfig.exe is attempting to upgrade all your service application and content databases to your current binary level.  This particular error will show up if someone in your organization was "smart" enough to decided to make a content database a project server database.  You will see this by looking at the tables in the database.  If you see any that are related to Project Server, then you know someone did something really dumb.

You can get your farm to upgrade by simple removing the offending database (aka detach it), then run the command to upgrade everything else.  

Resolution would be to remove all the project server based tables (make a backup of course) and then try your upgrade again. You could also attempt to tell SharePoint that the database is a "Project Server" database and attempt to upgrade it via Project Server but no guarantee that will work especially if the databases are from 2007/2010 days.  You would need a Project Server environment to upgrade all the way from the old version to the latest.

Enjoy, 
Chris 

Hybrid Search Results not displaying

Help!  My Hybrid Search isn't working!  What could it be?!?

  1. So you have successfully run the hybrid scripts here.
  2. You have ensured that the results are flowing to your Cloud Search Service Application via the Cloud SSA crawl logs.
  3. You go to do a search using your Azure AD cloud sync'd account and you get…nothing…what!??!
  4. You look things over and over again…maybe I didn't do this, maybe I didn't do that…no, it all looks good!

The possible cause:

  1. You didn't setup a User Profile Service Application (kinda rare I know)
  2. You view your "sync'd" site collection users profile and notice that the local "email address" does not match your cloud email address…doh!
    1. chris@companyone.com vs chris@companytwo.com
  3. You change the values to match using the edit list item feature of the site users list
  4. You re-run the cloud ssa crawl
  5. Go back to the cloud search center…ta da…results!  Just another reminded that UPNs have to match for the results to process and this value comes from the site collection users list when you have no UPS!

Hope this helps someone!
Chris

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