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Exchange Team Blog
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Updates on Servicing Exchange Server 2019

The_Exchange_Team's avatar
Dec 09, 2024

In early 2022, we announced changes to our servicing model for Exchange Server that moved to a servicing cadence of two Cumulative Updates (CUs) per year, releasing in H1 and H2 of each calendar year, with general target release dates of March and September. Our release dates are driven by the payload and quality, and other work that might take priority, such as releasing a security update (SU). 

In our last roadmap update, we said that the final CU for Exchange Server 2019—the H2 2024 CU aka CU15—would be released later this year. 

Today, we’re announcing that the final CU for Exchange Server 2019 will be the H1 2025 CU (still CU15, though), and we will release it in early January of 2025 (Edit 2/10/2025: CU15 has now been released). We took a similar approach last year and the year before. 

In the meantime, we recommend all customers update to the v2 version of the November 2024 SU, and perform the manual workaround for the known time zone issue. After that, download and run the latest release of the Exchange Server HealthChecker and verify that no issues exist. 

Finally, some things to keep in mind: 

  • We are not changing any of our lifecycle dates. 
  • This has no effect on the timing of the RTM release of Exchange Server SE, which is still expected in early H2 of CY25. 
  • Our guidance for all customers remains the same: get to Exchange Server 2019, install the latest update, and upgrade in-place to Exchange Server SE when available. 

Exchange Server Team 

Updated Feb 10, 2025
Version 3.0
  • cwkchan's avatar
    cwkchan
    Copper Contributor

    Jan-2025 is going to end and please advise if the target release date of 2019 CU15 still valid? So many customers are keep asking about it

    • Nino_Bilic's avatar
      Nino_Bilic
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      Can confirm that CU15 is still coming soon. It does not answer your question, indeed, but the release is not driven by a date but when CU15 is ready to release. Soon.

  • Sam_T's avatar
    Sam_T
    Iron Contributor

    The_Exchange_Team 

    No CU15 as of January 2025 so Microsoft has missed an entire 6-month "H2 2024" release window.  This and other problems have been going on for a long time:

    1) Late releases for no good reason but just endless excuses like "threat actors", or "we heard that people have change freezes in December" or <insert excuse to fit the situation>.

    2) CUs and HUs that obviously do not undergo any meaningful testing because customers are immediately exposed to the most basic of failures of the CU/HU that should have been picked up in Microsoft testing.  Customers are left to suffer and bear the brunt and potential cost of resolution in relation to loss of business or support overtime.

    3) Non-stop errors and omissions in EHLO blog posts that require seeming endless updates/clarifications/corrections to the original article which in turn means the articles can’t be trusted and you must spend hours wading through article updates and the comment section in each post to sort it all out.      

    4) Mediocre to poorly written documentation.  Information is disjoint and spread out over blog articles and across modern "docs" webpages which are a poor substitute for what used to be better written articles in "TechNet".  Things just seem to get worse at Microsoft. 

     

    The credibility of the Exchange team continues to approach zero.  There is no reason to believe any target release dates provided by the team so there is no reason to believe any of the information or timeframes around "H2 2024" or Exchange SE or any other release dates.

    As I have mentioned and others have mentioned previously, out here in the real world, people need time to plan, prepare and in some cases budget for application upgrades.  Could be weeks, months, or a year+ for larger shops - Exchange is not the only application that people use believe it or not and there are few support people that have the luxury of being dedicated to Exchange in the real world. Everything comes down to time, priorities and $$$. It’s obvious to me that this team have little to no experience in a real-world Exchange on-prem environment and if any of you do it was probably many,  many years ago.  Your internal fantasy-land production or lab environments don’t count either.    

    Is really the best that a company with a 3+ trillion-dollar market cap can do ?   Why do you continue to have such blatant disrespect for your customer base and more specifically, people that support Exchange ?  

  • Parism's avatar
    Parism
    Copper Contributor

    Hi,

    Can you provide details on the license price for exchanhe SE?

  • Is a confirmed release date available yet? We are now nearly mid-January.

    Thanks

    • Nino_Bilic's avatar
      Nino_Bilic
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      Negative. You did not miss it. It is coming, soon, but it will be a little longer.

      • KVWeisgarnix's avatar
        KVWeisgarnix
        Copper Contributor

        We plan to migrate from Exch2016 on WinSrv2016 to Exch2019 on WinSrv2025. Your monthly delays shorten our time frame we have for the migration. Can you provide an update please about the roadmap on when to release CU15? Early January is over, now also the Patch Tuesday... :(

  • Swiss_alps's avatar
    Swiss_alps
    Copper Contributor

    Hey Microsoft, when you say 'early January,' do you mean before or after the 8th? Just checking if my calendar is in sync with yours! 😄

  • fw888888's avatar
    fw888888
    Copper Contributor

    Dear all,

    WSUS didn't download the V2(KB5049233),  and V1 (KB5044062) is declined.

    How can I install V2 by WSUS(Windows server 2016).

    Thanks.