Exchange 2010 Update Process

From time to time, Microsoft release service packs and update rollups for Exchange. There are some things to keep in mind when it comes to applying these updates to your environment:

• Update rollup packages are cumulative. For example, if you apply Update Rollup 4 on a computer that is running Exchange 2010, you receive all the fixes in that specific update package together with all the fixes that were released in all earlier update rollup packages. That is, in Update Rollup 4, you receive all the updates that were released in the previous Update Rollup 1 through Update Rollup 3 packages plus the updates in Update Rollup 4.

• This approach to updating doesn't replace service packs for the product. Additional product fixes and features are released in separately available service packs for Exchange 2010.

• Microsoft releases update rollup packages approximately every six to eight weeks. The rollup packages are available via Microsoft Update and the Microsoft Download Center. In the Search box on the Microsoft Download Center, type "Exchange 2010 update rollup" to find links to the rollup packages.

• For Exchange 2010 configurations, the recommended order in which to apply the update rollup is as follows: Client Access server, Hub Transport server, Mailbox server, and Unified Messaging server.

To find out which version of Exchange 2010 you're running, logon to your server then go to Control Panel - Programs and Features. Highlight Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and make a note of the Version.
 
 

 
Or run the following Exchange Management Shell command:
 
Get-ExchangeServer | fl name,edition,admindisplayversion
 
To see a list of Exchange versions, follow this link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh135098.aspx

SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1 Will Be Available Shortly

According to the SharePoint Team Blog Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 will be available towards the end of June and it promises stability, perfomance and security enhancements the community has been asking for.

Here are the highlights of what we can expect:

Site Recycle Bin
Service Pack 1 will introduce long awaited Site Recycle Bin functionality that enables self-service recovery of site collections and sites. In the past IT Professionals were tasked with restoring entire databases to recover deleted site collections and sites and would generally require expensive restore environments to support the task. Now in Service Pack 1 administrators can quickly and easily recover site collections and sites accidentally deleted by their owners in a process similar to that of the Recycle Bin we have for Lists, Libraries, and Documents.

Shallow Copy
If you’re using Remote BLOB Storage you’ve probably realized that when moving Site Collections (Move-SPSite) between content databases each unit of unstructured data (BLOB) was round tripped (I.e. uploaded and subsequently downloaded again) serially during the move. This operation was both time consuming and resource intensive. In Service Pack 1 we reduce that overhead by enabling “shallow copy” when moving Site Collections between databases where Remote BLOB Storage is used. New Shallow Copy functionality with the Move-SPSite CmdLet enables moving site collections between content databases without moving the underlying unstructured data, i.e. Microsoft Word documents, PowerPoint Presentations, etc. significantly increasing performance and reliability for organizations using Remote BLOB Storage by simply updating the pointers to those objects in the destination content database.

StorMan.aspx
In SharePoint 2010 we removed StorMan.aspx (Storage Space Allocation) (see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982587/EN-US) which in previous versions of SharePoint enabled granular management and insight into storage. For example, the page would show you the top 100 documents or document libraries in terms of size. With that information end users could the page to clean up content from their site(s) by deleting the large content that they no longer needed. In Service Pack 1 we are bringing back an improved StorMan.aspx, enabling users to better understand where their quota is going and act upon that information to reduce the size of their sites.

New enhancements will improve the way you interact with information in SharePoint 2010. Service Pack 1 adds support for working with SharePoint and the Office Web Applications using Internet Explorer 9 and the Google Chrome browser (for a complete list of supported browsers for SharePoint 2010 see also http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263526.aspx), support for Open Document Format documents, and more.

There are also some unconfirmed reports of improvements to backup and restore, better Project/SharePoint integration and support for Google Chrome.

To read the official announcement click here and to be notified of updates sign up for the RSS feed here. Joel Oleson also has some information on his excellent SharePoint blog here.