Moodle Upgrade Hangs on -->System

Over the last few months we have been unable to complete Moodle updates and upgrades. The problem was that when the upgrade was kicked off the upgrade would hang at the first stage. Shown in the image below.

We use all Microsoft technologies for our system. 

• NLB clustered Windows Server 2008 R2 (IIS 7.5)
• PHP 5.2.13 (FastCGI) 
• SQL 2008 Failover Cluster
• MSSQL PHP Driver (not FreeTDS)

There was no error messages at all, and the windows would stay in exactly the same position for days if you left it. To cancel press CTRL+C.

Moodle Upgrade - Command Line

Recently i found that when attempting to upgrade a large Moodle site using the conventional browser based method, the server had a nasty habit of timing out on me. It is also notoriously difficult to see what is going on during an upgrade, when all you get is the spinning wheel in a browser.

Personally i found upgrading using the command line, much easier and much more informative than using the WFE.