Upgrading 2008 R2 PowerPivot Instance to 2012 succeeds, no new powerpivot components installed

Question

Hello,

I ran into a weird problem when I was upgrading our 2008 R2 PowerPivot SQL Server to SQL 2012.  All the proper patches were in place (SharePoint SP1 & Post-Aug 11 CU), the SharePoint farm was in working order, and the logged-in user was a farm administrator/had DB_owner access on Config/ local admin.  I mount the SQL 2012 RTM disk and launch the setup as administrator, choose upgrade from SQL 2008 R2, and select the PowerPivot instance(DB Engine & AS).  I run the upgrade and at the end I have a nice long list of green checkmarks with no errors indicated.

I then go to upgrade the PowerPivot deployment in the SharePoint farm, and the PowerPivot configuration tool hasn't been installed. I also cannot upgrade PowerPivot for SharePoint using PowerShell either because the appropriate farm solutions are nowhere to be found in the appropriate directories(which also have not been created). 

I'm at a loss, I've upgraded SQL 2008 R2 SQL servers to 2012 before, and the PowerPivot files/configuration tools install without a hitch.  Before I can go and uninstall the entire PowerPivot instance and install a brand new one, instead of upgrading, I need to move all the databases out of the PowerPivot DB engine which I should had never set up.  Is there anyway to upgrade this properly without having to move all the databases out of the current PowerPivot instance, uninstalling it, and re-installing SQL 2012 PowerPivot for SharePoint?

Answer 1

Hi karrakerc,

In your case, I think you can refer to the following article to achieve the upgrade. Please see:
Upgrading PowerPivot for SharePoint:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee210646.aspx

For more information about Deployment Checklist: Reporting Services, Power View, and PowerPivot for SharePoint, please refer to the article below:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh231687.aspx

Regards,
Bin Long

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Bin Long

TechNet Community Support

Answer 2

That was the article I was following to perform the upgrade, and I've performed similar upgrades without running into this issue before.  What I ended up doing was moving all the sharepoint databases I had on the PowerPivot sql engine over to another instance, and then uninstalling Analysis Services 2008 R2 completely and then re-installing SQL 2012 on it.  That ended up working for me and the powerpivot configuration tool and various components got installed. 

I then hit a SNAFU upgrading my powerpivot farm, as the tool kept reporting the farm was in an invalid state.  Through additional googling, I found out the April 2012 CU for SharePoint which was applied to our servers makes the version of SharePoint appear pre-SP1 version number to the powerpivot configuration tool.  We'll be installing the June 2012 CU and hopefully PowerPivot will upgrade smoothly after that.