Solution deployment fails

SharePoint, Solution

Deploying a SharePoint solution (.wsp file) to a SharePoint farm should be easy. Even if the farm contains 4 SharePoint Servers.

Just stsadm –o addsolution –filename solution.wsp. Some waiting so the deployment is done on every server, and we should be happy.

Well, the result was an Error in the solution status. Additionally the ULS log showed

Updating SPPersistedObject SolutionOperationStatus Name=SolutionOperationStatus Parent=SPSolutionLanguagePack Name=0. Version: -1 Ensure: 0, HashCode: 38896601, Id: 87c32e71-13f0-4d85-a215-29f1d180d239, Stack:    at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPPersistedObject.Update()     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPSolutionLanguagePack.SetOperationResult(SPSolutionOperationResult opResult, String msg, SPWebApplication webApp, Int32 updatesPerServer)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPSolutionLanguagePack.DeployFilesInstallFeatures(SPWebApplication webApp, Boolean globalInstallWPPackDlls, Boolean installFeatures, Boolean force, Int32 tries)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPSolutionLanguagePack.DeployLocalCore(Boolean globalInstallWPPackDlls, Collection`1 webAppl…

…ications, Boolean useAdminService, Boolean force)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPSolutionDeploymentJobDefinition.Execute(Guid targetInstanceId)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPTimerJobInvoke.Invoke(TimerJobExecuteData& data, Int32& result)

To get rid of the error, I went to the Timer Job definitions, and deleted the one which tried to add deploy the solution. The status went back to not deployed.

The reason for the Error was that the “Windows SharePoint Services Administration” was not stated on all SharePoint servers. After the services has been started, the deployment worked just as I expected it.

So make sure your Administration service is started, and running as System Account!