Released: Exchange Server 2013 Service Pack 1
Published Feb 25 2014 10:15 AM 313K Views

Exchange Server 2013 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is now available for download! Please make sure to read the release notesbefore installing SP1. The final build number for Exchange Server 2013 SP1 is 15.00.0847.032.

SP1 has already been deployed to thousands of production mailboxes in customer environments via the Exchange Server Technology Adoption Program (TAP). In addition to including fixes, SP1 provides enhancements to improve the Exchange 2013 experience. These include enhancements in security and compliance, architecture and administration, and user experiences. These key enhancements are introduced below.

Note: Some of the documentation referenced may not be fully available at the time of publishing of this post.

Security and Compliance

SP1 provides enhancements improving security and compliance capabilities in Exchange Server 2013. This includes improvements in the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) feature and the return of S/MIME encryption for Outlook Web App users.

  • DLP Policy Tips in Outlook Web App – DLP Policy Tips are now enabled for Outlook Web App (OWA) and OWA for Devices. These are the same Policy Tips available in Outlook 2013. DLP Policy Tips appear when a user attempts to send a message containing sensitive data that matches a DLP policy. Learn more about DLP Policy Tips.
  • DLP Document Fingerprinting – DLP policies already allow you to detect sensitive information such as financial or personal data. DLP Document Fingerprinting expands this capability to detect forms used in your organization. For example, you can create a document fingerprint based on your organization’s patent request form to identify when users are sending that form, and then use DLP actions to properly control dissemination of the content. Learn more about DLP Document Fingerprinting.
  • DLP sensitive information types for new regions – SP1 provides an expanded set of standard DLP sensitive information types covering an increased set of regions. SP1 adds region support for Poland, Finland and Taiwan. Learn more about the DLP sensitive information types available.
  • S/MIME support for OWA – SP1 also reintroduces the S/MIME feature in OWA, enabling OWA users to send and receive signed and encrypted email. Signed messages allow the recipient to verify that the message came from the specified sender and contains the only the content from the sender. This capability is supported when using OWA with Internet Explorer 9 or later. Learn more about S/MIME in Exchange 2013.

Architecture & Administration

These improvements help Exchange meet our customer requirements and stay in step with the latest platforms.

  • Windows Server 2012 R2 support – Exchange 2013 SP1 adds Windows Server 2012 R2 as a supported operating system and Active Directory environment for both domain and forest functional levels. For the complete configuration support information refer to the Exchange Server Supportability Matrix. This matrix includes details regarding Windows Server 2012 R2 support information about earlier versions of Exchange.
  • Exchange Admin Center Cmdlet Logging – The Exchange 2010 Management Console includes PowerShell cmdlet logging functionality. Listening to your feedback, we’re happy to announce that this functionality is now included in the Exchange Admin Center (EAC). The logging feature enables you to capture and review the recent (up to 500) commands executed in the EAC user interface while the logging window is open. Logging is invoked from the EAC help menu and continues logging while the logging window remains open.

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  • ADFS for OWA – Also new for Outlook Web App in SP1 is claims-based authentication for organizations using Active Directory Federation Services. Learn more about the scenario.
  • Edge Transport server role – SP1 also reintroduces the Edge Transport server role. If you have deployed Exchange 2013 with a supported legacy Exchange Edge Transport role, you don’t need to upgrade. That configuration is still supported. But we do recommend that future deployments use the Exchange 2013 Edge Transport role. Learn more about Edge Transport in Exchange 2013.
  • New communication method for Exchange and Outlook – SP1 introduces a new communication method for Exchange Server and Microsoft Outlook called MAPI over HTTP(MAPI/HTTP). This communication method simplifies connectivity troubleshooting and improves the user connection experience with resuming from hibernate or switching networks. MAPI/HTTP is disabled by default, allowing you to decide when to enable it for your organization. MAPI/HTTP can be used in place of RPC/HTTP (Outlook Anywhere) for your Outlook 2013 SP1 clients while Outlook 2013 RTM and older clients continue to use RPC/HTTP. Learn more about deploying MAPI/HTTP.
  • DAGs without Cluster Administrative Access Points - Windows Server 2012 R2 introduces failover clusters that can operate without an administrative access point: no IP addresses or IP address resource, no network name resource, and no cluster name object. SP1 enables you to create a DAG without an administrative access point on Windows Server 2012 R2 from EAC or PowerShell. This is an optional DAG configuration for SP1 and requires Windows Server 2012 R2. DAGs with administrative access points continue to be supported. Learn more about creating a DAG without an administrative access point here and here.
  • SSL offloading – SP1 now supports SSL offloading, allowing you to terminate incoming SSL connections in front of your CAS servers and move the SSL workload (encryption & decryption tasks) to a load balancer device. Learn how to configure SSL offloading in Exchange 2013.

User Experience

We know the user experience is crucial to running a great messaging platform. SP1 provides continued enhancements to help your users work smarter.

  • Enhanced text editor for OWA - OWA now uses the same rich text editor as SharePoint, thereby improving the user experience, and enabling several new formatting and composition capabilities that you expect from modern Web application - more pasting options, rich previews to linked content, and the ability to create and modify tables.

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  • Apps for Office in Compose – Mail apps are now available for use during the creation of new mail messages. This allows developers to build and users to leverage apps that can help them while they are composing mails. The compose apps leverage the Apps for Office platform and can be added via the existing Office store or corporate catalogs. Learn more about Apps for Office.

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Upgrading to SP1/Deploying SP1

As with all cumulative updates (CUs), SP1 is a full build of Exchange, and the deployment of SP1 is just like the deployment of a cumulative update.

Active Directory Preparation

Prior to or concurrent with upgrading or deploying SP1 onto a server, you must update Active Directory. These are the required actions to perform prior to installing SP1 on a server.

1. Exchange 2013 SP1 includes schema changes. Therefore, you will need to execute the following command to apply the schema changes.

setup.exe /PrepareSchema /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms

2. Exchange 2013 SP1 includes enterprise Active Directory changes (e.g., RBAC roles have been updated to support new cmdlets and/or properties). Therefore, you will need to execute the following command.

setup.exe /PrepareAD /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms

Server Deployment

Once the above preparatory steps are completed, you can install SP1 on your servers. Of course, as always, if you don’t separately perform the above steps, they will be performed by Setup when you install your first Exchange 2013 SP1 server. If this is your first Exchange 2013 server deployment, you will need to deploy both Client Access Server and Mailbox Server roles in your organization.

If you already deployed Exchange 2013 RTM code and want to upgrade to SP1, you will run the following command from a command line.

setup.exe /m:upgrade /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms

Alternatively you can start the installation through the GUI installer.

Hybrid deployments and EOA

Customers in hybrid deployments where Exchange is deployed on-premises and in the cloud, or who are using Exchange Online Archiving (EOA) with their on-premises Exchange deployment are required to deploy the most current (e.g., SP1) or the prior (e.g., CU3) Cumulative Update release.

Note: We have learned some customers using 3rd party or custom transport agents may experience issues after installation of SP1.  If you experience installation issues consult KB 2938053 to resolve this issue with transport agents.

Looking Ahead

Our next update for Exchange 2013 will be released as Exchange 2013 Cumulative Update 5. This CU release will continue the Exchange Server 2013 release process.

If you want to learn more about Exchange Server 2013 SP1 and have the opportunity to ask questions to the Exchange team in person, come join us at the Microsoft Exchange Conference.

Brian Shiers
Technical Product Manager, Exchange

214 Comments
Not applicable
@Brent Alinger [MSFT] - Please provide a link to the guidance that you mentioned in the below response. Cheers

@ABDL - Regarding OWA Apps on 2012 R2, yes there is a change in behavior in Windows 2012 R2 which requires a Web.Config change for many OWA Apps. We are working on a KB article for this issue and will have this guidance posted within the next week. Unfortunately the article was not ready for publishing prior to the launch of SP1. It is never our preference to force customer changes to Web.Config and we are working with the Windows team to make this seamless for those who want to deploy Windows Server 2012 R2.
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@Brent Alinger [MSFT]: Great, thanks for the update!
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Nevermind, figured it out. The upgrade broke the SMTP tie-in for Symantec Mail Security. Exchange Transport would start and then stop immediately on the 2013 mailbox server. Uninstalling Symantec Mail Security fixed it, so it probably just needs to be re-installed.
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Hello Exchange Team.

When can we expect to see the Exchange 2013 SP1 help file available for download?
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After upgrading to SP1 does not start the transport service. The logs error
Microsoft Exchange could not start transport agents. "C: Program Files (x86) EAExchDomainKeys EAExchDomainKeys2007.dll" because of an error "type not found."
After disabling the agent transport service start successfully.
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Plenty of my customers at http://emailmigrations.com have been waiting for Exchange 2013 SP1 before starting their email migration project. Good news it has arrived, and I am looking forward to testing, and then deploying it.
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internal Managed Availability Mails are still being copied to configured Journal Mailbox - will this ever be changed ?
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Do we have any hope to get these Public Folder limitations on the level which they should be in year 2014? Or are we all forced to keep Exchange 2010 still in organization?

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn594582%28v=exchg.150%29.aspx

10000 folders in PF store, is not an enterprise limit :(


Neither I have not seen fixed for cross forest migration and Public Folders. Any plans on that?

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We have been on SP1 for about a week and a half. The system seems very stable and responsive. Previously we had an issue with RPC crashing and SP1 seems to make that much better. We do have one issue with SP1 and that had to do with Caching plain text emails. We have setup the systems to pull full items now as a work around. We have a ticket open and MS was able to reproduce the issue yesterday. Hopefully they will find the issue and can resolve.
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Regarding broken Transport Agent issues, I can confirm the CFG files in the GAC are all broken. The first line in each file contains multiple hyphens (-------) which makes the entire XML invalid. Removing the first line, or fixing it by removing the multiple hyphens and making the line end with --> fixes the problem.
Since our agent was compiled with reference to Exchange 2013 RTM public DLLs, the following files should be edited:
"C:WindowsMicrosoft.NETassemblyGAC_MSILpolicy.15.0.Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Commonv4.0_15.0.847.30__31bf3856ad364e35Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Common.VersionPolicy15.0.cfg"
"C:WindowsMicrosoft.NETassemblyGAC_MSILpolicy.15.0.Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Transportv4.0_15.0.847.30__31bf3856ad364e35Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Transport.VersionPolicy15.0.cfg"
Microsoft, please note: those are not the only broken files - all other files in the same hierarchy are broken as well (C:WindowsMicrosoft.NETassemblyGAC_MSILpolicy.*.Microsoft.Exchange.Data.***.cfg).
I hope the above information will assist in releasing a quickfix ASAP.
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@Brent Alinger [MSFT]: Thank you. If the issue gets confirmed, can you please also confirm that removing the broken XML comment line is a proper workaround? We did comprehensive testing with the policy modified this way and tests were positive -- it's just we don't know if the comment is of any importance and removing it will break the next Exchange update or something.
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Upgrade servers from CU3 to SP1 broke all sounds in OWA.
Files with sound present in correct folders (owa/prem/15.0.847.32/resources/sounds/calendar_notify.mp3 for example), but IIS don't get it to client:
GET /owa/prem/15.0.847.32/resources/sounds/calendar_notify.mp3?UA=0 HTTP/1.1
Response HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
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when will I be able to download Exchange Server 2013 with SP1 from Volume Licencing Centre so I can install it on Windows Server 2012 R2?

thanks
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THANK YOU!!!!

Although, I'm still going to wait a few weeks to hear back from other people first, so please, please, please everyone post your production experiences here if you decide to deploy it.

If no issues and everything looks like it's clean, then I'll start updating everyone immediately. I feel like after waiting a year, we are hopefully looking at a good, stable update that clears up the previous CU issues. The last update where the config file was modified to timeout 480 times really caused some pain. Same with all the URL directory rebuilds due to IS going bonkers. Hopefully we won't see any more of that and we're back on track with a fantastic Exchange experience for both the end users and admins.

THANK YOU for releasing this update!
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@Jetze Mellema: Sorry to hear that Connection filtering is still not supported. But I have already made some other agents in C# for Exchange and I think I am going to make one which check against a block list and then set the spam confidence level or a x-header if it is listed. Shouldn't be to much work with this ......
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One concern in upgrading to SP1: Is it necessary to remove security update for CU3 (KB2880833) before upgrading to SP1? I recall that there were serious problems at CU1->CU2 upgrade with these security updates which eventually lead to failed upgrade.
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Before going and start upgrading, it would be beneficial to stop just for a moment, and remember back to the year 2013, and all those not so successful update and rollback stories...
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@AN, you may have run setup from PowerShell session which will call the existing setup file. Please run setup from a normal command line in the path you extracted the SP1 files instead and you should have better luck. :)
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@ Chris & Jordan, the modern PF access issue from Windows XP clients is fixed in SP1

Please check KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2926248 for major issues that are fixed in SP1
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@RossSmithIV - Thank you for your answer! Today we'll start upgrading CU3 servers to SP1.
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Does it support Office 2010 on XP workstations?
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When can we expect to see the Exchange 2013 SP1 help file available for download?
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@Stig Vidar Hovland: Unfortunately not, the Connection Filtering Agent is still not supported on Exchange 2013 CAS. You could deploy an Exchange 2013 Edge Transport server with SP1 to perform this task.
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@Tony, the Edge Transport role in 2013 SP1 is managed through Exchange Management Shell until you create an Edge Subscription with the internal servers. IIS is not a requirement for ET to operate so there is no place to render EAC on the box and you end up with a system running far fewer processes.
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@Everyone bumping into some issues, please use the Exchange TechNet forums where we can interact better. Comment sections are very hard to try to help with technical issues. Love the enthusiasm, but don't want to miss helping if it gets lost in the other comments.

@George & Brook, do either of you have 3rd party transport agents installed?
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@Tony, the download page leads you here for details if you look at the details section. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2926248
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@Stanthewizzard An in-place upgrade of the operating system of a server with Exchange installed is not supported. I'd recommend to restore from backup or roll-back with setup /m:RecoverServer. See for more information: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd876880(v=exchg.150).aspx
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Released: Exchange Server 2013 Service Pack 1
nice work
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I suppose there is no concern, but shold this say Service Pack 1 or Cumulative Update 4 for Unattended Setup?

C:Windowssystem32>setup.exe /PrepareSchema /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms

Welcome to Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 3 Unattended Setup

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We are already running Exchange 2013 CU3 on win 2012 RTM in production. I would like to upgrade to Exhange 2013 SP1 and also Windows 2012 R2.
Since, in-place upgrade of Win 2012 to win 2012 R2 is not supported if Exchagne 2013 is already installed.
Do you think if we keep running win 2012 would there be any issues in future?
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@Ericdukece: You need prepare domain by Ex2013 SP1 distributive. You must install SP1, no need for RTM (every Exchange 2013 CU#SP# distributive is a complete version of Exchange)
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Hello! MAPI over HTTP will support publishing through TMG?
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We're also having issues with custom-developed Transport Agent built with reference to Exchange 2013 RTM public DLLs, as mentioned in other comments here. Any status on this? Maybe a workaround for customers (like editing XML files for compatibility)?
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when will I be able to download Exchange Server 2013 with SP1 from Volume Licencing Centre so I can install it on Windows Server 2012 R2?

thanks
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Thanks have been keeping back a couple of projects waiting for this, while none of my customers use it I'm glad to have back the Edge role as it is a nice options in smaller deployments.
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Is connection filtering (ip block list providers like zen.spamhaus.org) supported on single server environments with this update? Like it was in Exchange 2010?
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Thank you Mr. Brian.
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Installing now. Will see how it goes. As an FYI... Been running CU3 on 2012R2 with Domain Functional of 2012 R2 and it runs fine to be honest.
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@ Медведовский Алексей – yes, you can publish MAPI/HTTP using TMG, just by adding the /mapi path to your publishing rule. You cannot however currently do this with UAG, there’s an update planned for UAG to add support for MAPI/HTTP.
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GFI_Customer: They (and other vendors) are likely experiencing the same Transport Agents issue that we do. I have posted to the Exchange Server Development TechNet forum, maybe that'll shed some light to the issue.
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@Qaiser.Khan, as mentioned in a previous announcement (the URL escapes me right now) Forefront Protection for Exchange 2010 was the last major version and a 2013 version is not to be released. Edge in 2013 SP1 retains the same Antispam features Edge in 2010 SP3 had, but A/V is handled by the 2013 mailbox role's anti-malware agent, a third-party on-box solution, or perhaps Exchange Online Protection.

@stanthewizard (do you have a cool staff and hat?), Upgrading AD would have to be answered by the directory services team, but generally they allow in-place upgrades of DCs and it should not affect Exchange. Jetze is correct that any server with Exchange installed on it cannot have an in-place OS upgrade happen and remain in a supported state. You would have to remove Exchange, upgrade, re-install Exchange.
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Improvement (oh no): "Test-SmtpConnectivity" showed me that my own receive connector AND the Default Frontend use the same binding "0.0.0.0:25". After deactivating my receive connector, I could start the "Microsoft Exchange Frontend Transport" service.
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@Korbyn, you're welcome. Our sustained engineer team is very good about making sure important items found (in this example) in post-SP1 builds we are running are what we call back-ported to SP1 builds. This is where the .32 in the version # comes from as there are a number of revisions were additional changes are made before we finally release an update.

@Chris, yes see this article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2918951/
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@AmbersEd, were you in a Exchange Mangement Shell session when you ran that command? I see you were in the C:WindowsSystem32> path. If you were in EMS, then it calls the default setup installed with the last update. Please try running the SP1 setup from an elevated command prompt (not an EMS session) and browse to the directory you extracted the SP1 files into before running the command.
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Has SP1 been deployed internally at Microsoft and on Office 365? I believe it was mentioned after CU2, that this particular change release management process was going to be happening, and I'm curious to let our O365 customers know where they're at, and what confidence level we have for our On Prem clients. Thanks. K.
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@Eddy1968, check if you have to copy newer versions of (I think) ESE.exe and ESE.dll from the 2013 SP1 server to the DPM server. DPM always needs the latest versions to be able to checksum the same version EDB.
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@JB-RI, I believe the specific external meeting forwarding issue you mention was resolved in CU3. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2902929
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@Burak, just different ways of packaging the same bits.
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Can't find this answer. I have an exchange 2007 going to 2013. I have my 2012R2 servers ready. Do I prep the domain with the sp1 binaries or the rtm binaries? Do I install rtm exchange then update to sp1 or is there a slipstreamed exchange 2013 that includes sp1 that I should be using.
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