Well, found how to get the dnn version number (via host->host settings) and found that I already had 4.9.5 on this staging environment. So looks like reason for update not showing any message at all is because there was no work to be done there.
My production environment had 4.9.1 (as shown by hosts setting) and I ran the same process on it. Saw upgrade getting triggered and showing the following
Current Assembly version 04.09.05 (Question, why is it showing 4.9.5 here when host settings showed 4.9.1, is it done upgrading because I had copied over?)
Current Database version 04.09.01
Upgrade status report
00 - upgrading to 4.9.5
00:00:00.015 - Executing Script: 04.09.02.sqlDataProvider Error! (see 04.09.02.log for more information) <----- although this happened but site is working fine
Server Error in '/' Application.
violation of UNIQUE KEY constraint 'IX_Version'. Can not insert duplicate key in object 'dbo.version'
<..more error message..stack trace etc >
Site is working fine and host settings are now showing 4.9.5 but I don't understand this error above ...is this something serious ?