SharePoint showing unexisting build number after patching

Question

After great help from this community I was able to update my SharePoint environment and everything went smoothly.

With that finished, I went to check the build number in Central Administration and it is showing this build:

14.0.7175.5000

However the Cumulative Update installed was the November 2016 and it should be build:

14.0.7176.5000

This doesn't strike me as a major issue but I am wondering why this happens. The build before patching was:

14.0.7015.1000 SP2

I ran psconfig on all servers and made sure all content databases were updates.

Any clues on this?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Here is very good explanation about the issue you mentioned.

when looking at the SharePoint foundation KB article there are rare cases that the patch level listed in the central administration is lower than the version number in the KB article. The reason for this is that different fixes are added to the CU at different times. Some fixes modify dlls of the components other just CSS files or JavaScript files. Most of the fixes affect the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll as this is the core component of the SharePoint Foundation component – so its version number usually has the highest version number in the package. But not always! It might be that the last fix being added to the package is a different file. If this is the case, then the version number in the KB article might reflect the version of this other file. If this file is a dll you can verify this in explorer. But if this file is just a CSS file or a Javascript file or any other file which does not carry version information then you might not be able to identify the file which defines the version number in the KB article.

If you ran the config wizard already then no need to worry about it as your farm is up to date.

Read more here: SharePoint patching demystified

Answer 2

In some exceptional cases, the CU does not update the configuration database version in Central Administration like Oct CU 2013.

And in this case, you can get the configuration database version from SQL Server by

• opening Content Database > the versions table.
• Check the version number with versionID 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000.

Or by checking patch installation status in central administration

• Upgrade and Migration > Check product and patch installation status.

So I suggest trying to update the config database by running the PSConfig via PowerShell rather than using the configuration wizard UI as the following

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

For more details check Find the latest Cumulative Update / Farm Patch Level that has been installed in a SharePoint Farm

Answer 3

Did you look at the build-number in CA -> System Settings -> Manage Servers in this farm -> Configuration Database Version.

Unfortunately the Config-DB build number does not always match the build of a (cumulative) update.

The best ressource to check success of your installation is CA -> Upgrade and Migration -> View product and patch installation status. Check if your expected CU is listed there as installed. Also check in CA -> upgrade and migration -> "check upgrade status" that your last psconfig-run shows "succeeded".

If you want all the dirty details about SharePoint versioning, i recommend you to read: SharePoint does not have a build version. Full Stop.