Today I downloaded the latest CU (CU2) forExchange Server 2013. There are a number of fixes in this release and to install it is pretty straight forward but there are a few things to take note of:

a) You need to run a Schema Update
b) You need to run an AD Update
c) Best practice to put the servers into Maintenance Mode.

Maintenance Mode:

Run the following 4 commands to put the server into maintenance mode.

1. Set-MailboxServer <servername> -DatabaseCopyActivationDisabledAndMoveNow $True
2. Set-ServerComponentState –Identity <servername> –Component HubTransport –State Draining –Requester Maintenance
3. Suspend-ClusterNode –Name <servername>
4. Set-MailboxServer –Identity <servername> –DatabaseCopyAutoActivationPolicy Blocked

Right, so if you don’t do step A & B the setup just stops and gives you the error that you need to prepare the Schema. So simply open up a command prompt as Administrator, Navigate to the setup files you extracted earlier on and run the following:

a) Setup.exe /PrepareSchema /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms

This update takes a few minutes, once that is done lets move on to the next update

b) setup.exe /PrepareAD /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms

This update also takes a few minutes. Once done we can now run the full setup. At the command prompt you still have open type in Setup and press enter.

Wait a few seconds and the GUI will open. Follow the prompts and sit back and wait a while for the setup to complete. There are 17 steps to run through in this setup.

Once finished you need to reboot your server. Lastly after the reboot you will need to run 4 commands to take the server out of Maintenance mode again.

1. Set-MailboxServer –Identity ServerName –DatabaseCopyAutoActivationPolicy Unrestricted
2. Resume-ClusterNode –Name ServerName
3. Set-ServerComponentState –Identity ServerName –Component HubTransport –State Active –Requester Maintenance
4. Set-MailboxServer –Identity ServerName –DatabaseCopyActivationDisabledAndMoveNow $False

Now you can do the next server. One thing I picked up after this was that one of my databases content index state was giving the error “FailedandSuspended”. To fix this error simply run the following command in Exchange PowerShell.

Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy <databaseName><ReplicaServerName> -SourceServer <ActiveServerName> -DeleteExistingFiles:$True

More reading on the release of Exchange 2013 CU2:
http://windowsitpro.com/blog/exchange-2013-rtm-cu2-makes-its-appearance

Hope it helps

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