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What is the best practice regarding deployments of Microsoft Exchange 2013 and the various Cumulative Updates available for the platform?

I've once made the mistake of downloading the Exchange installation .ISO from Microsoft and running normal Windows updates in the past. I had no knowledge of the Cumulative Updates, and had a very rough time with the installations/deployments (bugs, functionality gaps, angry customers). I subsequently installed the CU5 and things eventually worked out.

I thought I was doing the right thing here!! enter image description here

I'm working with a new installation right now, and read that Exchange 2013 Cumulative Update 6 is available. In the release announcement, there's a suggestion that the Cumulative Update can be installed on its own without any prerequisites.

Customers deploying Exchange 2013 for the first time may skip previous releases and start their deployment with CU6 as well

The installation ISO that I downloaded was 4GB, but the Cumulative Update is only 1.6GB.

  • This is obviously confusing, since this is a departure from the older way of installing things and the documentation seems contradictory.
  • What is the purpose of the 4GB install DVD .ISO if the Cumulative Updates are the go-to installers?
  • Is this well-known?
  • What is missing in the CU6 installer to account for the difference in download size?
ewwhite
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1 Answers1

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I don't know if it is "well-known".

I agree that the documentation of this feature is poor. Here is some Microsoft Documentation:

Updates for Exchange 2013

Exchange 2013 cumulative updates and service packs include all the changes from previous updates and are full builds of the product. You don't have to install the previous cumulative updates or service packs to get the latest features.

Servicing Exchange 2013

Each quarterly CU package will be released as a full refresh of the Exchange product and will be installed as a build to build upgrade

The purpose of the DVD .ISO is for companies deciding not to update to the latest CU/SP. Same as you can download each previous CU/SP of any Microsoft Product.

I found out the difference in size
the .exe is compressed
it's 2.8 GB once you uncompressed it
it is missing some Unified Messaging language packs (450 MB) as well as a "Search" folder with strange data in it. Seems to be a FAST Search Engine (MS Product) - don't ask me why it's on the Exchange Product DVD though :)

MichelZ
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  • Thank you! This saved me a ton of time and streamlined the process of building the Exchange server. In the past, there were simply too many bugs in the RTM version that needed the CU packages to fix them. Everything worked perfectly this time. – ewwhite Oct 06 '14 at 12:32