{"id":5288,"date":"2014-07-31T09:53:53","date_gmt":"2014-07-31T08:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/?p=5288"},"modified":"2014-07-31T10:24:25","modified_gmt":"2014-07-31T09:24:25","slug":"exchange-support-and-cumulative-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2014\/07\/exchange-support-and-cumulative-updates.htm","title":{"rendered":"Exchange support and cumulative updates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft’s Support Lifecycle<\/a> has been published for many years now – and\u00a0most people are familiar with the concept of 5+5 support – i.e. 5 years mainstream support, followed by 5 years extended. \u00a0Some products (e.g. Windows XP) had a slightly longer period of support as they were\u00a0introduced before the 5+5 policy but, as a rule, we can assume\u00a010 year support for a product and be making plans to move up in the second half of that period.<\/p>\n

It’s not quite that simple though – service packs need to be considered. \u00a0Often the support lifecycle has a note that says something like “Support ends 12 months after the next service pack releases or at the end of the product’s support lifecycle, whichever comes first.”. \u00a0That’s OK –\u00a0service packs should be applied as part of regular maintenance anyway, so keeping up to date will keep you supported. \u00a0And, anyway, service packs only come along every year or\u00a0two…<\/p>\n

…until recently.<\/p>\n

With the growth in Microsoft’s online services, for instance Exchange Online (sold under the Office 365 banner), we’re entering a period of\u00a0cumulative updates. \u00a0New features and functionality are rolled out online, and then made available\u00a0for “on premises” deployments. \u00a0Now, I’ve long since argued that new features and software fixes should be separate<\/a> – but\u00a0the world has moved on\u00a0and we now see a cumulative update for Exchange Server every 3 months or so.<\/p>\n

So, unlike the rollup updates (RUs) with previous versions of Exchange, Exchange\u00a02013 cumulative updates (CUs) are effectively mini-service packs (CU4 was actually released as SP1). \u00a0And, critically, CUs go out of support 3 months after the next one comes out. \u00a0That means that we all need to get tighter on our application of CUs – and, because of the new features and functionality they introduce, that means testing too!<\/p>\n

Exchange 2013 support\u00a0gotcha!<\/h3>\n

My colleagues, Keith Robertson and Nick Parlow<\/a>\u00a0(@hagbard<\/a>), recently highlighted a little anomaly that the Exchange CU support situation exposes in Microsoft’s documentation:<\/p>\n