Microsoft announced in the bulletin it shared yesterday that it has changed the update model for the Exchange Server.
Updates published quarterly (March, June, September, and December) were changed after feedback from customers. And they announced that they have commissioned a new update service.
In the announcement, two CU’s per year – will releasing in H1 and H2 of each calendar year, with general target release dates of March and September (these dates may change).
If you are planning to make cumulative updates to your Exchange Servers, you must first put the server on which you will install the update into maintenance mode. To perform maintenance on Exchange Servers, follow these steps:
First of all, if you are using a load-balancer, make sure that there is no mail traffic to the server you will maintain.
Pre-Check 1 – Get-ServerComponentState ExchServerName | ft Component,State -Autosize
Pre-Check 2 – Get-MailboxServer ExchServerName | ft DatabaseCopy* -Autosize
Control 1 – Get-ServerComponentState ExchServerName | ft Component,State -Autosize
Control 2 – Get-MailboxServer ExchServerName | ft DatabaseCopy* -Autosize Get-ClusterNode ExchServerName | fl Get-Queue
By the way, if you have made changes to the configuration files (Web.config,Edgetransport.exe.config etc) before starting the update process, it is recommended to backup them, because the changes you made after the update will return to their default settings.
You can now update the server.
After completing the update process we need to take the server out of maintenance mode.
After 1 – Set-ServerComponentState ExchServerName -Component ServerWideOffline -State Active -Requester Maintenance
After 2 – CD $ExScripts .\StopDagServerMaintenance.ps1 -serverName ExchServerName
After 3 – Set-ServerComponentState ExchServerName -Component HubTransport -State Active -Requester Maintenance
After 4 – Restart-Service MSExchangeTransport
After 5 – Get-ServerComponentState ExchServerName | ft Component,State -Autosize
If you have specific configuration backups, you can compare them with your backups and rearrange them. (Don’t forget to restart the server)
Now you can add your server to the load-balancer again and include it in the mail traffic.