I want to thank you for your continued patience while we work to correct the problems encountered with our latest Update Rollups for Exchange 2007 Service Pack 3 and Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 (E2007 SP3 RU3 and E2010 SP1 RU3). The Exchange Product Group takes software quality seriously. We owe you, our customers, much, much better.
Let me provide an update on each.
Exchange 2007 SP3 RU3 Status
The Exchange Servicing team expects to re-release the Exchange 2007 SP3 RU3 rollup in the next day or so. We are going through the final sign-off processes. As reported yesterday, a bug was introduced which had the potential to create database corruption. We consider any situation which could lead to data loss a significant risk, which is why we posted the unusual guidance to rollback to the previously installed version versus waiting for an update.
Still, we have been able to identify the issue, remove the fix which introduced the problem, complete our testing, and expect to re-release the Update Rollup shortly. We also understand what happened to allow this situation to occur and are taking corrective measures. Finally, for customers who have not uninstalled E2007 SP3 RU3, this will install seamlessly on top of the existing E2007 SP3 RU3 installations.
Update 4/6/2011: The updated Exchange 2010 SP1 RU3 has been re-released. See Announcing the Re-release of Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 Update Rollup 3 (V3).
3/31/2011: The updated Exchange 2007 SP3 RU3 has been released. See Announcing the Re-release of Exchange 2007 Service Pack 3 Update Rollup 3 (V2).
Exchange 2010 SP1 RU3 Status
For E2010 SP1 RU3 we are still one to two weeks away from re-release. While the previous post specifically mentioned only one issue related to duplicate messages in the Sent Items folder on Blackberry devices, we unfortunately uncovered one additional issue after my original post. There is no risk of to customer data as a result of this second problem. However, the underlying problem is complex and we are taking the necessary time to get a high quality solution.
Specific to this second issue we uncovered a problem which manifested as an email delivery delay for users of Microsoft Outlook 2007 or 2010. Our investigation of the problem exposed a rare situation in Exchange 2010 where notifications were not sent to these clients. What changed in E2010 SP1 RU3 is that this situation is more likely to occur because of code added to support coexistence in cross-premises environments, i.e., users within an enterprise both on-premises and in the cloud.
While I know many of you are waiting to deploy E2010 SP1 RU3, and we could have removed the code to more quickly turn around the re-release, in our analysis we felt this issue was significant enough that it needed to be addressed immediately. Additionally our testing uncovered the need to refine the notification experience with Microsoft Outlook 2003 clients. So we have taken the additional time to ensure resolution of the issues uncovered with notifications. The delay in re-releasing E2010 SP1 RU3 is a result of ensuring these issues are resolved satisfactorily
For those of you that currently have E2010 SP1 RU3 installed, you can either uninstall E2010 SP1 RU3 (which is recommended if you are experiencing any of the above issues), or wait for the re-release. The re-release build will install seamlessly on top of the existing E2010 SP1 RU3 installation.
Kevin Allison
General Manager
Exchange Customer Experience
