[sims] SIMS update/patch strategy via SOLUS 3

[Koldov]

Well, it looks like SOLUS 3 has multiple patches available to patch/fix various issues as usual...

 

I got an email from our admin asking me to patch SIMS as they can't import a fileset and therefore run the census without it.

 

Bit strange I thought as I've never had to do a patch for a fileset import, they've obviously done something wrong, but as the ESS support site says:

 

"Please note that that no filesets for the SIMS Spring Release 2022 can be imported until Consolidated Workstation Patch 2, or above, for the SIMS Spring Release 2022 has been applied."

 

I've never really done any intermediate patches for SIMS/FMS unless we had a particular issue that it fixes, it made me wonder if I should be just hitting deploy on everything that pops up, so I'd like to ask what your patch management strategy for SIMS is?

 

Also, I'm sometimes a little confused by SOLUS as to what actually applies to us, does this system only deliver updates to SOLUS that are needed by each individual school...?

[Linfit]

There are three "Patches" required before the summer census can be done:

 

1. Consolidated Workstation Patch 2 for the SIMS Spring Release 2022

2. Fileset 2101

3. Consolidated Database Patch 1 for the SIMS Spring Release 2022

 

They need to be installed in the order shown above for everything to work correctly.

 

I generally do not deploy every patch that appears in SOLUS unless it is directly relevant to an issue we have or is required for census.

I just feel the thing is flaky enough, no need to install stuff that is not relevant.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Linfit

[Koldov]

Just to clarify, the confusion about which patch to deploy (or not) stems from the fact that we don't have any sort of MIS Manager/Data Manager and I don't get time to read every single 'Knowledgebase Article' for every patch, we don't use about 90% of what SIMS is capable of and I've very wary about introducing issues by patching parts of the system we don't need.

 

For example:

 

"Please note that we are investigating a case where it appears that application of Fileset 2101 has removed our solution for issue vii below, so that the Support Unit link is missing from the communications box until the Website has been entered in the Support Unit Details panel of Focus | School | School Details.

 

With the above in mind, we recommend that this consolidated database patch is applied after Workstation Patch 2 has been applied and Fileset 2101 has been imported."

 

So, I could have caused an issue by doing them in the wrong order (not that I believe we use the 'Support Unit' but I don't know for sure)...

 

Also things like this:

 

 

Am I going mad or does an earlier version of SOLUS have a later version number and why were they released to us on the same day (we already had 3.12.50 at version 1.0.152.1 on 19/11/2018)...?

[Koldov]

Well, that's weird...

 

I've logged in tonight to deploy the updates only to find they aren't even downloaded into SOLUS (they are set to auto download).

 

Anyway, I set them to download within SOLUS and waited... and waited... as they are only a few kb I was expecting it to be done within seconds... but it just didn't download anything.

 

In the end I downloaded them chose the 'Download' tab > 'View in browser' downloaded them manually into a folder and imported them, anyone else seeing this behaviour?

[eddyc]

Well, that's weird...

 

I've logged in tonight to deploy the updates only to find they aren't even downloaded into SOLUS (they are set to auto download).

 

Anyway, I set them to download within SOLUS and waited... and waited... as they are only a few kb I was expecting it to be done within seconds... but it just didn't download anything.

 

In the end I downloaded them chose the 'Download' tab > 'View in browser' downloaded them manually into a folder and imported them, anyone else seeing this behaviour?

 

I was seeing this exact behaviour and it was relating to SOLUS3 being stuck between the Capita old servers and the new ESS ones.

 

I was advised to follow these steps, and that did the trick for us.

 

Workaround

 

The issue has been resolved by updating the download to use an ESS URL.

 

Please follow the below steps to resolve this issue:

 

 

1) Cancel the stuck download

 

2) Restart the SOLUS3 Deployment service within services.msc

 

3) Open SOLUS3 and navigate to Settings | SOLUS3 | Updates and get updates 'from the beginning'

 

4) Restart the SOLUS3 deployment service again

 

5) Now try to download the patch and this should be successful.

 

eddyc

[Koldov]

Well, that seems to have fixed it!

 

Many thanks @eddyc

 

I'll have to see if it 'auto-downloads' the others tonight...

[Koldov]

OK, so it looks like I need to revisit this again...

 

For some reason on a server restart, SOLUS decides it wants to download a patch and fails causing it to retry every few seconds (and since I did the latest Windows updates on Sunday morning it has been filling up my event log with thousands of errors)...

 

The error is for SCHANNEL:

 

A fatal alert was received from the remote endpoint. The TLS protocol defined fatal alert code is 70

 

Which Google says is:

 

It means communication with the server was attempted using a recognized but unsupported TLS version. If your server is set to accept only communications using TLS 1.2 or newer, for example, then anything that tries to communicate via TLS 1.1 or lower will throw this error.

 

Which is OK, if it does it once, realises it's a no-go and carries on with TLS 1.2 or higher, but it looks like this isn't happening....

 

Is this a problem with my server or with ESS/SOLUS...?

 

I tried the suggestion from @eddyc and it did the trick again, but it's getting annoying! I downloaded the update/patch it was trying and it went through (but there was a brief 404 error) so the errors have stopped. Weird thing is I already have that patch downloaded, but think I tried it when the URL changed to ESS, so it must have got confused...