The Exchange Team announced Cumulative Update 8 earlier this month.
As always, test these updates in a lab first!
It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate. In fact, I used to do a lot of testing from a Windows 8.1 laptop where I had Hyper-V installed. My laptop ran 3 VMs–Exchange 2010, 2013 and a DC. Hyper-V comes included with Windows 8. It’s comparable to VMware Workstation in functionality.
Enough about labs! What are these updates and where can I get them?
The updates are as follows:
Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 8
UM Language Packs for Cumulative Update 8
Exchange Server 2010 SP3 Update Rollup 9
Exchange Server 2007 SP3 Update Rollup 16
So what’s new?
This update is a culmination of bug fixes and feature tweaks. This update also includes Daylight Saving Time changes. Microsoft reports there are no security patches included in this update.
Good for Public Folders
The Exchange Team announced the following Public Folder improvements in Cumulative Update 8.
” We would like to call your attention to a few items in particular about the Cumulative Update 8 release:
- Calendar and Contact Modern Public Folders now accessible in OWA
- Batch Migration of Public Folders to 2013 improves migration throughput and PF migration experience
- The number of supported Public Folders has increased for on-premises deployments (O365 remain the same)“
The increase in supported Public Folders is big!
In the last Cumulative Update, Microsoft increased the maximum hierarchy to 250,000 folders. In Cumulative Update 8, that ceiling has been quadrupled. You can now have 1,000,000 folders in your Public Folder hierarchy. Not that I have ever seen anyone even get close to 250,000 folders. But still, way cool!
The maximum number of Public Folder Mailboxes holds steady at 100. But I expect this will increase soon.
Required for hybrid
Microsoft requires that anyone in a hybrid environment be up to date.
” Customers in hybrid deployments where Exchange is deployed on-premises and in the cloud, or who are using Exchange Online Archiving (EOA) with their on-premises Exchange deployment are required to deploy the most current Cumulative Update release. “
Schema Updates Needed
If upgrading from Cumulative Update 7 to Cumulative Update 8, then there are no schema changes. However, if migrating from an earlier update you will need to perform a schema update. Microsoft documents that update process here. For a quick reference on schema and build versions check here.
Any insight into Cumulative Update 9?
A little.
If you check this TechNet article from the Exchange Team you can see that a small change is coming to Shared Mailboxes. It is the ability for a copy of a Sent Item to be saved inside the Shared Mailbox. More info on that here.
Exchange 2007 & 2010
With Exchange 2010 now officially in Extended Support, we only saw a handful of fixes for it. This update also includes a patch for Daylight Saving Time. You can read more about Update Rollup 9 here.
Exchange 2007 only received a Daylight Saving Time update in Update Rollup 16.
Ready?
Would love to hear about your update experience. Did it go smoothly? Any hiccups?
Drop a comment below.
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