Exchange Server: Third Month, Third Week

Just a reminder, the Exchange Product Group (PG) is following the current cadence of releasing Exchange Cumulative Updates (CU) every third month (March, June, September, December) and the third week of that month. This allows a predictable rhythm for customers to plan when to upgrade their Exchange servers. With this planning, customers should download the latest CU when it becomes available, deploy into their test environment, confirm no issues, and then roll into production shortly afterwards.

It’s probably a clever idea to wait a few weeks, before rolling the latest CU into production, just in case the Exchange PG finds an issue and needs to publish a ‘v2’ for the CU. While an extremely rare possibility, it can happen. The Exchange PG tries their best not to have to release a v2, but occasionally will, if there is a big enough issue that needs to be resolved before the next planned CU in three months.

So there you go, every 92 days, you’ll need to plan for an Exchange update, and now it’s strategic on a consistent tempo. And as always, if you’re in hybrid, all Exchange servers need to be N or N-1 CU updates, or you are not supported.