How To Determine Which Rollup Update Service Manager 2016

If you would like to read the side by side part in this commodity series delight go to Applying Service Pack and Rollup Updates on Substitution Server 2010 (Part ii).

In this article serial we are going over the step-by-footstep process to upgrade your servers running Exchange Server 2010 to new Service Packs and Rollup Updates using either GUI (graphical user interface) or command line.

The Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack three is a milestone in the product considering that is the basic requirement to permit a transition from Exchange Server 2010 to Commutation Server 2013 CU1. Besides the transition capabilities we can as well install information technology on Windows Server 2012 (new deployments but, it is not supported on OS upgrades) and support for Internet Explorer 10.

Our scenario is simple and provides for peachy flexibility to examination all possible scenarios. You may detect yourself in one of the tests that nosotros perform throughout this article series. In our commodity scenario we accept 2 (ii) servers with the Client Admission and Hub Send role and two (two) servers running Mailbox office in a DAG while all servers are running Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1. You can check out the current servers past clicking on Server Configuration (Figure 01) or running Get-ExchangeServer cmdlet (Effigy 02).

Figure 01

Figure 02

That is just great… but Version and Build are all Greek to me, what should I do? No worries, if you are not certain which Service Pack and/or Rollup Update y'all have in your environs the Build Numbers can exist scary at beginning glance, simply using this page you can easily match the edifice number with the Service pack/Rollup Update.

Order to employ the Service Pack 3 and a few hints…

The first thing when you are planning is the order to apply Service Pack iii on your servers. These are the key rules to apply a new Service Pack in your arrangement.

Client Access Server (if yous accept multiple sites net facing sites beginning)
Hub Ship
Mailbox
Unified Messaging

Before going whatsoever further let's go over a couple of items that tin speed upward your upgrade process in your environs, as follows:

Backup, backup, backup!

Before playing with production environments, delight make certain that you have valid backups of your servers, Agile Directory and Databases.

In addition, a good file-level backup of any Exchange (peculiarly OWA customization) may exist useful.

Certificate your environment

Make sure that you take all your server names, and well-nigh important information recorded. My fellow MVP Steve Goodman wrote a script that gives you a list of all servers, their versions, databases, roles, Operating arrangement and and so forth. Y'all can cheque his Exchange Environment Report.

Plan your outage

Make sure that you test the process on an surroundings similar to production and plan well your outage time and communicate that to the end-users.

Note:
If you are upgrading your environment from RTM to Service Pack 3, then you should add 30 minutes per database due a Database Schema upgrade that was done on Service Pack 1 of the production and since Service Pack three is slipstream then those upgrades will be performed when you motility from RTM to SP3. There is no database schema upgrade from SP1 or SP2 to SP3.

Test it commencement

Before going ahead and applying a new Service Pack in your production surroundings make sure that yous validate in a test/lab surround.

Surround validation before and afterward the upgrade process

It does non affair if you are going to migrate one or several servers. I always advise you create a spreadsheet with Test Case scenarios for each server upgrade. You tin can create a listing with all the tests that you desire to perform, y'all can start simple, such as Outlook internal and external access; you tin can too add together several additional tests to your validation process such equally postal service flow and usage of Net tools provided by Microsoft Exchange Team (ExRCA.com is a slap-up tool for testing).

Read the Release Notes and the Knowledge Base commodity for the new update

Another all-time do is to read the Release Notes and Knowledge Base of operations of the new update. The KB and release notes are available on the same page of the update.

Hardware Load Balancer in front of your CAS/HUB servers

If yous are using a Hardware Load Balancer solution, y'all should add together a chore to your planning to remove the server that will receive the upgrade from product. In Figure 03, we can see the pick to Disable or Force Offline in a LTM (F5 device) at the pool member level. If you utilize a different Hardware Load Balancer they will have similar options, the same applies for Microsoft Load Balancer software solutions.

Figure 03

Substitution Server 2010 pre-requisites…

Now that we covered a couple of best practices, we can get-go the technical side of the prerequisites. In this department, we will cover the following key points in detail.

Download Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack three
Add the IIS 6 WMI Compatibility
Remove the previous log files
Stop whatsoever third-party tool on Commutation
End SCOM maintenance

The first task of our listing is the easiest one which is the downloading of Service Pack 3. Service Pack 3 can be plant here.

The second item of our listing is to add an IIS component. The new Service Pack 3 requires that this new component be installed, and we tin can install it either using GUI or command line. If you lot like the graphical user interface, just add a role service to the IIS component and select IIS 6 WMI Compatibility equally shown in Figure 04.

Figure 04

If yous like to automate you tin can always perform the same tasks using PowerShell, equally shown in Figure 05.

Figure 05

The third item is not a big deal but if you lot want to proceed your deployment logs separate for inspect requirements it does not hurt to do it. It is virtually probable that we are upgrading an existent Exchange Server deployment to Service Pack 3 and for that reason we can go ahead and delete the C:\ExchangeSetupLogs folder because all log information was from the previous installation. By doing that nosotros guarantee that all new log data will be related to our new upgrade process.

The 4th detail of our listing is to disable any services that interact with Exchange and it tin be Antivirus, Fill-in, etc. If you are not sure what is running on the server a good start is to expect at the Arrangement Configuration Utility (run the msconfig from command prompt or Run) and then become to the Services tab and cheque the option Hibernate all Microsoft services, as shown in Figure 06.

Figure 06

If you employ SCOM (Arrangement Centre Operations Managing director) or any other Monitoring Tool make sure that you cease the service as well. If y'all are using SCOM, make sure to add together the server in maintenance manner which can exist done through SCOM Console or web interface.

The last bespeak that I want to make before starting the process is to make certain that y'all disconnect any administrator connected to the server through RDP and brand sure that you do not have an Exchange Direction Console or Shell running on the server during the upgrade.

Conclusion

In this first article, we covered a couple of primal points that should be visited before installing Service Pack 3 in a production environment. In our 2d article we will be installing Service Pack iii on a standalone server and DAG members using either GUI or command line interfaces.

If you would like to read the next part in this article series delight get to Applying Service Pack and Rollup Updates on Commutation Server 2010 (Part 2).