Updating to AppFabric 1.1

We have been utilizing AppFabric in IIS to monitor our WCF/WF service successfully for several years now.  I found a few older servers that had not been update to the latest 1.1 version so I decided to update them.  This turned out to be more complicated than I expected so I wanted to share the issues I encountered and the steps that I took to apply the update.

You can download the AppFabric 1.1 installer from Microsoft download center.

Issues

Still Running

The first issue you will likely see when you try to upgrade or install AppFabric will be that it is still running.

Information           Setup  Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Upgrade.V1UpgradeSetupModule : Initiating V1.0 Upgrade module.
Information           Setup  Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Upgrade.V1UpgradeSetupModule : V1.0 is installed.
Error                 Setup  The following configuration issues were detected.  Please resolve them before continuing.
Error                 Setup  AppFabric Workflow Management Service is running
Error                 Setup  AppFabric Event Collection Service is running

So you need to stop any of the running AppFabric services from Services window.

image

Note – I’ve also noticed it is better to stop the World Wide Web Publishing and Windows Process Activation services as well.  This wasn’t required on all servers but on others an upgrade seemed to force a reboot which resulted in only uninstalling the 1.0 version of AppFabric.  Then a 1.1 install would work.

Already Installed

If you already have AppFabric installed and attempt to install using the “i” flag:

>AppFabricSetup.exe /i /l “C:\temp\log.txt

You will likely see the following error:

Error                 Setup  This product is already installed.

Instead you should use the “u” flag to upgrade AppFabric.

Upgrade All or Nothing

I only use the monitoring part of AppFabric so I tried to upgrade only that component to start with:

>AppFabricSetup.exe /u MonitoringServices /l “C:\temp\log.txt

The result was the following error:

—————————
AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server Setup Wizard
—————————
Command line syntax error. Specify /? for help.

Duplicate command line argument.

Parameter name: upgrade.

After rereading the automated installation documentation again I realized you can’t upgrade individual components of AppFabric.  It’s all or nothing.  So you must remove the service feature name, for example:

>AppFabricSetup.exe /u /l “C:\temp\log.txt

Last Resort

The upgrade steps above worked for several servers but the last server I attempted this on gave me the following error:

Error                 Setup  Could not find file ‘C:\Windows\System32\AppFabric\DistributedCacheService.exe.config’.
Error                 Setup     at System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath)
Error                 Setup     at System.IO.FileStream.Init(String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, Int32 rights, Boolean useRights, FileShare share, Int32 bufferSize, FileOptions options, SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES secAttrs, String msgPath, Boolean bFromProxy)
Error                 Setup     at System.IO.FileStream..ctor(String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, FileShare share, Int32 bufferSize, FileOptions options, String msgPath, Boolean bFromProxy)
Error                 Setup     at System.IO.FileStream..ctor(String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, FileShare share, Int32 bufferSize, FileOptions options)
Error                 Setup     at System.IO.StreamReader..ctor(String path, Encoding encoding, Boolean detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks, Int32 bufferSize)
Error                 Setup     at System.IO.StreamReader..ctor(String path, Encoding encoding)
Error                 Setup     at System.IO.File.ReadAllText(String path, Encoding encoding)
Error                 Setup     at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Upgrade.ConfigFileEntity.Backup()
Error                 Setup     at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Upgrade.UpgradeBackupManager.BackupConfiguration(FeatureSet installedFeatureSet)
Error                 Setup     at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Upgrade.V1UpgradeSetupModule.PreInstall()

After further research I wasn’t able to find a solution to this and ended up uninstalling AppFabric through the Server Manager:

image

After this I was able to install version 1.1 successfully.

Success!

A successful installation/upgrade will result in the following log output:

Information           Setup  === Summary of Actions ===
Information           Setup  Required Windows components    :  Completed Successfully
Information           Setup  Application Server Role            :  Completed Successfully
Information           Setup  IIS Management Console            :  Completed Successfully
Information           Setup  Microsoft CCR and DSS Runtime 2008 R3            :  Completed Successfully
Information           Setup  AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server            :  Completed Successfully

Well that was fun (sarcasm)! Hopefully others will benefit from my findings and save some time in upgrading AppFabric.  If this post was helpful or you have further questions please leave a comment below. 

Happy Upgrading!

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