Installing Cumulative Updates for Exchange Server 2013

Tonight’s “home work” Assignment:
Update  Companies Exchange 2013 to Cumulative Update 3

Purpose

• Address many of the issues that existed in Cumulative Update 2.
• Bring additional value to the company

Oh and some of the newly introduced features / enhancements should help also:

• Usability improvements when adding members to distribution groups in the Exchange Administration Console (EAC)
• Windows Azure AD Rights Management available for use for IRM protection in on-premises Exchange deployments
• Improved administrator audit logging experience
• Windows 8.1/IE 11 no longer require the use of OWA Light

To get the Exchange 2013 Cumulative Update 3 just click here

Here are some steps to keep in mind when / if you are preforming this update yourself.

Preparation Tasks

Like that of installing any updates get ready. Read about what your installing and know why you are installing it.

• Download the Cumulative Update 3 Install – here is a link hope it still works, if not just go to the download center and download it to each exchange server.
• Backup Active Directory – Exchange CU3  will modify your schema
• Backup you existing Exchange  2013 server(s)
• Backup your existing Exchange databases (data/log volumes)
• Have documented info on anything that you may have customized; such as configurations.
• If you use 3rd party add-on to exchange (GOD HELP YOU)
• And if you have no idea of what your doing and not 100% confident then you should not proceed further – my advice

Preforming the update

Locate your downloaded package containing the Cumulative Update 3 and extract it.  Once completed run the Setup.exe

If your server is connected to the internet you will be asked if you can check for updates. It’s a good idea to do this.

 

When the update had completed its check click Next to continue. The setup will being to cop files. This will take some time. Once completed the setup will detect that you are installing an update to Exchange 2013

You will presented with the normal license agreement, and as always you will accept them so you can proceed with the install. Once you have done so the installer will check for existing and new prerequisites it needs to continue the installation

After the readiness checks have completed the setup process continues and this my friend will take a very long time. In my case it was about 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete.

 

The setup process saves the exchange configuration and removes all the previous exchange installation

It then copies the new installation files to the server, in addition to other files such a languages etc..

Closer to the end of the update it configures your services again

And when the setup has completed you are prompted to restart the server if required.  *please* restart your server as you would want to test to ensure all services start up as expected.

Congratulations you have just updated to Exchange 2013 Cumulative Update 3

Post Install Tasks

• Review windows event logs on your Exchange server(s)
• Review services
• Review connectivity to Exchange – Outlook Web Access, Outlook Clients, Mobile Device Connectivity
• Write up a summery of what you did to share with team members are supervising management types – I included my actual report at the end of this post.

 

My Summery:

I have completed the work on Exchange.
Completion time was 12:30 AM Saturday, January 18, 2014

Tasks Preformed before Update Process
• Exchange Server was shutdown to adjust memory resources
• Exchange Data & Log Volumes moved  to Volume Collection
• Volume Collection of Exchanges Data & Log Volumes were made into a full snapshot as part of a backup / rollback plan
• Exchange Server was also made into a snapshot for backup / rollback plan

Update Process
• After exchange was restarted, began the verification of  files
•  Started update process,  monitored resources during the upgrade
• Update ran for 2 hours from start to finish.
• Once update was completed, restarted exchange
• Upon resuming, verified services were started automatically and storage volumes were attached
• Inspected event logs for any errors.
• Tested connectivity with OWA, Mobile and Outlook access