Exchange 2013 CU1: The software that RTM could have been

By Tony Redmond, WindowsIT Pro [Published on 2, April 2013]

Six months after RTM, Microsoft has shipped the first cumulative update for Exchange 2013 (CU1) on April 2, 2013 to complete the software line-up required to start deployments alongside previous versions of Exchange. Many good changes are made in CU1 to address some of the problems noted in the RTM version, so now's the time to really become interested in Exchange 2013.

The first cumulative update for Exchange 2013 (CU1), or to give the software its official title, "Exchange Server 2013 RTM Cumulative Update 1", has arrived and is available for immediate download. The new release can be installed using a "build to build" (B2B) upgrade if you already have Exchange 2013 RTM in place. Otherwise you can simply install Exchange 2013 CU1 and use it as your starting point for Exchange 2013. An Active Directory schema update is required to support Exchange 2013 CU1. This is a different version to the schema update released with Exchange 2010 SP3. Those who track these things can use Michael B. Smith's PowerShell one-liner to fetch the value of the rangeUpper property from the ms-Exch-Schema-Version-Pt attribute in AD (the answer is 15254). The formal build number is 620.29.

Apart from marking the debut of Microsoft's new method for updating Exchange, CU1 is required to interoperate with Exchange 2010 (SP3) and Exchange 2007 (SP3 RU10). Thankfully, one of the final barriers to deployment is now released, unless of course you're still running Exchange 2003 or an even earlier version, in which case you have to figure out your path forward. Maybe it will be via a first step to Exchange 2010, or maybe you'll go "all in" and embrace the cloud. Office 365 or other hosting platforms do look like attractive options when considering a double-barreled migration.

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