We started getting this error on our SharePoint server. One of those once-every-minute type errors that leaves you looking at a sea of red when you look at the event log in the morning.
Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance (<GUID>).
Reason: An update conflict has occurred, and you must re-try this action. The object SearchDataAccessServiceInstance was updated by <USER>, in the OWSTIMER (4272) process, on machine <MACHINE>. View the tracing log for more information about the conflict.
Technical Support Details:
Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUpdatedConcurrencyException: An update conflict has occurred, and you must re-try this action. The object SearchDataAccessServiceInstance was updated by <USER>, in the OWSTIMER (4272) process, on machine <MACHINE>. View the tracing log for more information about the conflict.
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance.Synchronize()
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.ApplicationServerJob.ProvisionLocalSharedServiceInstances(Boolean isAdministrationServiceJob)
This is a single server farm SharePoint instance that was recently rebooted, so perhaps something went wrong on the shutdown/reboot process. Restarting it again unfortunately did not help. Happily, this one was easily resolved through a Google search.
You need to clear the SharePoint user cache, which can be found at %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\. Delete all the files here, then create a cache.ini file (this may be automatically created after you delete everything, at least it was for me). Edit the file using Notepad/your favorite text editor and add the number 1 to the file.
Your error should then clear up :).
You may have to stop/start the SharePoint services that are running, but I didn’t have to.
See another post about this here: http://behof.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/application-server-job-failed-for-service-instance-searchserviceinstance-spupdatedconcurrencyexception/
(Seeing as this was posted a few days ago maybe there’s something about June that triggers this….)