Microsoft has recently released Service Pack 1 for SQL 2008 which you can download from here.

Being the brave person that I am, I decided to update my SQL instance housing my SharePoint databases as soon as I could. Even though it doesn’t contain any new features but mainly bug fixes and a rollup of cumulative updates 1-3, I have a habit of being up to date!

So, today was the day! After successfully updating my VMware ESX hosts to update 4, I decided I would continue with the theme of “updating” and upgrade one of my SQL 2008 boxes which is dedicated to housing my SharePoint databases. However, on first attempt in applying the service pack the installer failed whilst doing its prerequisite check with the following error

A failure was detected for a previous installation, patch, or repair for instance ‘MSSQLSERVER’ during configuration for features [sql_powershell_tools_ans,]. In order to apply this patch package (KB959337), you must resolve any issues with the previous operation that failed. View the summary.txt log to determine why the previous operation failed.

Please note that the feature(s) mentioned above could be some other component of SQL 2008 and not necessarily the power shell tools listed in my case.  All you need to do is run a repair on SQL 2008 and re-run the installer for Service Pack 1. You should be back in business and the update will be applied successfully.

BTW, my SharePoint farm is still up and running with nothing broken…. yet

More details on the Service Pack release can be found at the Microsoft SQL News Blog.