In a surprise – but welcomed – move, Microsoft announced yesterday that the office support lifecycle for Office 365 ProPlus on Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2016 are extended to January 2023 (EOL of Windows 8.1) and October 2025 respectively. In addition, Office 2016 connectivity support for Office 365 services will be extended to October 2023 (was 2020).
Other announced changes in product support lifecycles were extending Windows 10 Enterprise & Education support from 18 to 30 months. Also, for Windows 7 Professional & Enterprise, paid security updates (Extended Security Updates) will be offered, and those Windows 7 ESU devices will be supported through January 2023 – parallel to Windows 8.1 – with Office 365 ProPlus.
The intention of these changes is to provide customers more flexibility in adopting modern desktops on the client end (i.e. Windows 10) and upgrade their Office suite, preferably to the susbscription-based ProPlus. The release cadence of the cloud has significant impact on organizations, which were told in February to keep in line with product releases as a lot of product support lifecycles were going to end in 2020.
Extending those dates not only gives them more flexibility to plan and upgrade, but also might prevent organizations to do only to the minimum, which is likely the reason many organizations are still on Windows 7 and why it took many organizations a long time to get rid of Windows XP.
Microsoft keeps track of the currently supported combinations of .NET Framework and Exchange Cumulative Updates at the Exchange Server Supportability Matrix. However, as time progresses, support information on older Cumulative Updates might be removed from the information presented, and you may need to resort to cached versions of this page or other sources to find this information.
This might be problematic for organizations that are not current and need to determine which upgrade path to stay within the boundaries of supported Exchange deployment configurations. For example, you may need to upgrade to a specific Cumulative Update first, supported by a newer release of the .NET Framework, to upgrade to a later Cumulative Update.
For these situations, the following tables contain the supportability matrix, enhanced with information regarding earlier Cumulative Updates and .NET Framework versions. These will provide you with the supported upgrade paths for older versions of Exchange.
Note:In-place upgrades of the operating system on which Exchange Server runs are not supported and will not work. Also, keep in mind that you cannot mix nodes within the same Database Availability Groups concerning the operating system. New operating system = new Exchange Server installation = new Database Availability Group.
Exchange 2019
.NET
RTM-CU1
CU2-CU3
CU4-CU13
CU14-CU15
4.7.2
X
X
–
–
4.8
–
X
X
–
4.8.1
–
–
X
X
Exchange 2016
.NET
RTM- CU1
CU2
CU3- CU4
CU5- CU7
CU8- CU9
CU10
CU11- CU12
CU13- CU14
CU15- CU23
4.5
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
4.5.1
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
4.5.2
X
X
X
–
–
–
–
–
–
4.6.11
–
X
X
–
–
–
–
–
–
4.6.2
–
–
X
X
X
–
–
–
–
4.72
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
4.7.1
–
–
–
–
X
X
X
–
–
4.7.2
–
–
–
–
–
–
X
X
–
4.8
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
X
X
Exchange 2013
.NET
RTM- CU3
CU4(SP1)- CU12
CU13- CU14
CU15
CU16- CU18
CU19- CU20
CU21- CU22
CU23
4.5
X
X
X
–
–
–
–
–
4.5.1
–
X
X
X
–
–
–
–
4.5.2
–
X
X
X
–
–
–
–
4.6.11
–
–
X
X
–
–
–
–
4.6.2
–
–
–
X
X
X
–
–
4.72
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
4.7.1
–
–
–
–
–
X
X
–
4.7.2
–
–
–
–
–
–
X
X
4.8
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
X
Notes
When possible, bypass .NET Framework 4.6.1, as it not only requires updating the CU level before updating the .NET Framework, but also requires an additional hotfix: kb3146715 (ws2012r2), kb3146714 (ws2012) or kb3146716 (ws2008r2).
.NET Framework 4.7 is not supported for any product level.
Usage Suppose your organization loves procrastinating, and you are running Exchange 2013 CU6. Luckily, you run it on .NET Framework 4.5.1, which was already a supported configuration back in 2014 – yes, it’s been that long. Looking at the table, to get current with a minimal number of updates in mind, you can derive the following path:
The upgrade path to CU19 would therefor be:
Upgrade to Exchange 2013 Cumulative Update 15
Upgrade .NET Framework to 4.6.2
Upgrade to Exchange 2013 Cumulative Update 19
Upgrade .NET Framework to 4.7.1 (Optional)
Note that in addition to information being refreshed on Microsoft pages, the availability of older Cumulative Updates or .NET Framework updates might also change, so archive those files accordingly, if not for recovery of existing Exchange servers, then for this exact purpose.
Of course, you should stay as current as possible from a support and security perspective, making the above a non-issue. The reality is, some customers have reasons, legitimate or not, to be trailing with updates in their environment, and at some point may need guidance on how to proceed to get current. I hope this information helps in those situations.
Thoughts and feedback are welcome in the comments.
Update: On February 13th, Microsoft updated upgrade guidance on the Exchange Supportability Matrix page, stating:
“When upgrading Exchange from an unsupported CU to the current CU and no intermediate CUs are available, you should upgrade to the latest version of .NET that’s supported by Exchange first and then immediately upgrade to the current CU. This method doesn’t replace the need to keep your Exchange servers up to date and on the latest, supported CU. Microsoft makes no claim that an upgrade failure will not occur using this method, which may result in the need to contact Microsoft Support Services”.
This means you will be supported when upgrading in the revised upgrade path, but the risk is still there. In the example above, when going from Exchange 2013 CU6 with .NET 4.5.1 to CU19, the support statement indicates you can upgrade to .NET Framework 4.7.1, when installing CU19. However, things might break, and you may need to contact support to get back into a supported, working situation. Therefore, I repeat my recommendation to download and archive CU’s and .NET Framework files, even when you are not planning on installing them (yet).
The Exchange team published an update for the Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator, the tool to aid you in properly sizing your Exchange Server 2013 or Exchange Server 2016 deployment.
The new version number is 8.3, and it contains two major enhancements compared to version 7.9:
Added ability for the calculator to automatically determine the number of Mailbox servers and DAGs that need to be deployed to meet the chosen input requirements
Added Read from Passive support for Exchange 2016 deployments which results in decreased bandwidth utilization for HA copies
You can download the calculator here. For more information, please consult the list of changes here or Read Me here.
The Exchange team published an update for the Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator, the tool to aid you in properly sizing your Exchange Server 2013 or Exchange Server 2016 deployment. The new version number is 7.9, and it contains mainly bug fixes.
Functionality changes and bug fixes since version 7.8:
Added support for 1.8TB disk capacity
Added color formatting for when memory exceeds the maximum recommended value
Fixed calcNumDBCopyInSDC formula to take into account proper number of lagged copies
Fixed calcActDBPDCWorst formula to take into account non-HA deployments
Fixed an issue where ReplayLagManager calculated field did not take into account the user disabling JBOD
Fixed version mismatch and added Add-PartitionAccessPath in Diskpart.ps1 script
Fixed issue with export CreateDAG.ps1 script where it defined Alternate Witness in single datacenter deployments
Fixed diskpart.ps1 script to sleep 10s after creating partition but prior to formatting to minimize error condition
Fixed RetainDeletedItemsUntilBackup to be set to $false for NDP deployments
You can download the calculator here. For more information, please consult the list of changes here or Read Me here.
The Exchange team today published an update for the Exchange 2013 Server Role Requirements Calculator as well. The new version number is 7.8. This version incorporates sizing for Exchange 2016 as well and includes support for ReFS (default for Exchange 2016). The version number is also dropped from the calculator.
More or less complementary to the calculator is the updated sizing guidance for Exchange 2016, which was also published today here. No big changes here, apart from multi-role only option and a slight increase in CPU requirements to cover for unforeseen circumstances as the team is still learning from real-world behavior. This makes sense, looking at the speed in which the calculator was released compared to the one for Exchange 2013. Kudos to the Exchange team!
New and enhanced functionality since version 7.6:
Added support for Exchange 2016
Included CPU utilization guidance changes for Exchange 2016
Diskpart.ps1 and CreateDAG.ps1 now support ReFS
Moved DataMoveReplicationConstraint setting from CreateMBDatabases.ps1 to CreateMBDatabaseCopies.ps1
Revised all of the Distribution dialog controls to load their defaults from variables rather than use hard-coded values
The DAG name from the Input tab now flows through as the default on the Export DAG dialog
Updated Distribution tab dialog controls to persist the global catalog value during a session
Added conditional formatting for ReplayLagTime and SafetyNetThreshold
Removed 2013 from the name of the calculator
Fixes since version 7.6:
Fixed inaccuracies with “Number of Exchange Data Volumes per Server” input
Fixed calcActDBPDCWorst formula to take into account non-HA deployments
Fixed multiple dbs / volume calculation to take into account ReplayLagManager
Fixed calcNumDBCopyInSDC formula to take into account proper number of lagged copies
Fixed MaxPreferredActive not being displayed for A/A (Single DAG) site resilient solutions
Fixed an issue with Fail* buttons on Distribution tab when using some regional settings
Fixed an issue with volume path persistence on the Distribution tab Mount Points dialog
You can download the calculator here. For more information, please consult the list of changes here or Read Me here.
In a surprise – but welcomed – move, Microsoft announced yesterday that the office support lifecycle for Office 365 ProPlus on Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2016 are extended to January 2023 (EOL of Windows 8.1) and October 2025 respectively. In addition, Office 2016 connectivity support for Office 365 services will be extended to October 2023 (was 2020).
The Exchange team published an 
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