Exchange Cumulative Updates (June 2020)

This week was a big week for Exchange. Microsoft released its sixth cumulative update for Exchange 2019 as well as a cumulative update for Exchange 2016. At the time of writing, there is no cumulative update for Exchange 2013.

As always, test these updates in a lab first! I recommend checking out this 7-part guide on configuring Exchange in your lab. It doesn’t take much to get one going.

The updates are as follows:

Exchange 2019 Cumulative Update 6 (VLSC)| KB4556415

Exchange 2016 Cumulative Update 17 | KB4556414 | UM Language Pack

So, what’s new in these Cumulative Updates?

In this series of cumulative updates, Microsoft added thirteen new blocked file types for use with the OWA Mailbox Policy. The additions included several scripting extensions, including many python file types such as .py, .pyc, and .pyo. For a full list of the new extensions, check the following article.

These cumulative updates also correct an issue when using the Restore-RecoverableItems command in a pipe. We covered the cloud-exclusive GUI version of this command in an article earlier this week. Be sure to check it out.

Companies leveraging Hybrid Modern Authentication will also want to take note of these updates as they fix unexpected authentication prompts during certificate rollovers.

Customers leveraging Edge Transport will also want to take note as these updates resolve a situation where Edge Transport servers may become unresponsive due to deadlock in the shadow redundancy manager.

For a full list of all fixes, be sure to check out the KBs KB4556415 and KB4556414.

If you are current on your Exchange updates, then these cumulative updates will not extend the schema. If you are running Exchange 2016 CU6 or earlier, or Exchange 2019 CU1 or earlier, you will need to perform a schema update.

While these updates do not contain any changes to the schema, you may need to run SETUP /PrepareAD to apply security changes that were introduced in earlier cumulative updates. If you are running Exchange 2016 CU12 or earlier, or Exchange 2019 CU1 or earlier, you will need to run SETUP /PrepareAD.

If you are running multiple versions of Exchange in coexistence, run SETUP /PrepareAD from the newest version of Exchange. For example, if you have Exchange 2013 and Exchange 2019, run SETUP /PrepareAD from Exchange 2019.

Note: If you are running in a multi-domain environment, you will need to perform SETUP /PrepareDomain in each domain. You do not need to run /PrepareDomain in the domain where you performed /PrepareAD. /PrepareAD also invokes the /PrepareDomain process.

The final countdown – 119 days left for Exchange 2010

Back in September, the Exchange Team announced that is was extending support for Exchange 2010 by nine months. Exchange 2010 now shares the same end-of-life date as Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010, which is October 13th, 2020.

While this extension allows for a little more breathing room, it does not extend support for Windows Server 2008 R2, which is the underlying operating system for many Exchange 2010 installations. Server 2008 R2 was end-of-life as of January 14th, 2020.

The Exchange Team has provided this extension to allow companies more time to migrate to a newer email platform, such as Office 365 or Exchange 2016.

Unfortunately, there is no direct path to Exchange 2019 from 2010. If you do plan to stay on-prem, you will need to migrate to either 2013 or 2016 (I’d recommend 2016 as 2013 is now in extended support). From there, you can migrate to 2019.

For more information on migrating from Exchange 2010 to 2016, check out this recent blog article from the Exchange Team: Exchange On-Premises Best Practices for Migrations from 2010 to 2016

Further Reading

Here are some articles I thought you might like.

• Recover deleted email in a user’s mailbox
• Hybrid Configuration Wizard fails: WinRM client cannot process the request
• Use Log Parser Studio in your Exchange & Office 365 migration planning
• Blocking OneDrive may save attachments to the default SharePoint document library
• RPC/HTTP & Block Legacy Auth may prevent Outlook reconfiguration after migrating to Exchange Online

So what do you think is coming next? What would you like to see? Drop a comment below or join the conversation on Twitter @SuperTekBoy.