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SharePoint Server 2019: Upgrade Available status in new farm, Admin Content Database required upgrade.

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Scenario:

 Recently working on a SharePoint Enterprise Server 2019 Test lab,  the message "Upgrade Available" came across in the "Manage Servers in the Farm" page of Central Admin.

Troubleshooting:

Verified that there was no updates installed by the Windows Update. However, upon verifying the "Review Database Status" page in Central Admin I came across the SharePoint_AdminContent database was asking for an upgrade and all other databases didn't. 

So, I tried upgrading this database with several methods following this article, /en-us/sharepoint/support/server-admin/upgrade-available-status-in-new-farm, however the upgrade kept on failing. It gave me an error as follows.

1) Action 16.1.1.0 of Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.Database.Extension.Upgrade.PDEUpgradeSequence failed

2) Exception: The object 'MSP_SECURITY_RELATIONS_VIEW' is dependent on column 'ENCODED_CLAIM'.

I thought of removing the admin content database from the farm by dismounting and creating a new central admin web app via new-spcentraladministration command or PSconfig, However, that does not work as it does not create new Admin content database. The Only way is to rebuild the the complete farm. But, in cases if this had been a production environment it would have caused a lot of efforts and mostly likely no approval from business ;) and it also does not seem healthy to rebuild the farm. 

Also did not have project server service application or any components or it. So i though of and configured the Project Server Service Application, thinking that it would somehow kick start the upgrade to the new version, however even then the upgrade failed. 

So, what next...

The above article stated the following:

"This can happen if some components in the database have not have been set to the expected version when the SharePoint 2016 Configuration Wizard created the Central Administration AdminContent database."

So what I understood (may be right or wrong understanding :) ) that Config Wizard could not set the versions of some components as expected when creating the Admin Content database, in my case it will be Project Server from the errors it got.  I tried finding ways to change the version but upgrade seemed to be the only option available and that was failing.

Solution:

Hence, I though why not install an update of SharePoint Server 2019 which would force the upgrade of the components with the required/ new version of Project Server automatically. However, the update should contain Project Server Updates..... So, I simply pulled up the April 2019 Update of SharePoint Server 2019 and searched for Project Server update. I could see that under file information that the Project Server file was available in this update.  

So, I quickly installed this update on to my SharePoint 2019 Farm and ran the Config Wizard GUI and after seeing it finish successfully.. Voila.. the Admin Content Database got successfully upgraded :)

And also the Upgrade available message in Manage servers in the Farm also changed to "No action required"