The first Skype for Business Patch has Arrived

It didn't take long for the first patch for Skype to come along and it is a highly important patch for many. A bug discovered after RTM of Skype was discovered with Exchange UM Interaction and normalization. The actual bug is KB3069206 and stalled many Skype for Business upgrades as Exchange UM Auto Attendants are kind of important.

In addition to the UM fix there are smaller yet just as important fixes listed such as dropping parked calls, SfBWA (aka LWA) crashes, RGS agent transfer issues, and so on. In short - if you have Skype for Business deployed this patch is a must and for those waiting because of the aforementioned bugs, migrations can now move on.

Upgrades are a bit different in Skype for Business only because of the new patching methods. If you were comfortable with patching in Lync & clearly understood upgrade domains, then there is no change. There are also no updates required to the Skype databases in this release so while we can run the good-old Install-CsDatabase command you will simply get a result of:

VERBOSE: All databases at the specified installation location are already up to date.

Make sure all servers are updated in the FE pool, the Edge servers, P-Chat, Mediation and any app servers you may have. The core components at a minimum will be updated while servers like the Edge role have an actual update.

For those that have a highly non-recommended two-node Enterprise Pool, there is an additional Fabric step required. Once you have patched the pool and rebooted, run the following command from PowerShell.

Reset-CsPoolRegistrarState -ResetType FullReset

Additional patching information can be found on the KB Update page 3061064.

Product

Version

KBs

Download

Skype Server 2015

6.0.9319.55

3061064

MS Download

 

Additional Notes:
Lync Server 2013 build number is 5.0.8308.887

Lync 2013 Client build number is 15.0.4727.1001

Skype for Business Server 2015 build number is 6.0.9319.55

Lync Group Chat build number is 4.0.7577. 4409

Lync Group Chat Server build number 4.0.7577.4409

Lync Group Chat Admin build number 4.0.7577.4409

Lync Attendee build number is 4.0.7577.4461

Lync Attendant build number is 4.0.7577.4098

Lync Phone Editions build number is 4.0.7577.4463
Lync Phone Edition (Tanjay) build number is 4.0.7577.4463
Lync for Mac 2011 build number is 14.0.11

Lync 2013 for Windows Phone build number 5.9.1371.0

Lync 2013 for iPad build number 5.7.563

Lync 2013 for iPhone build number 5.7.563

Lync 2013 for Android build number 5.6.3.1
Lync 2013 for Android tablet build number 5.5.3.8919
Lync Windows Store App build number is March 2014

Lync Basic 2013 build number is 15.0.4420.1017
Lync VDI 2013 build number is 15.0.4420.1017

Lync 2013 to Skype for Business in-place Upgrade...the experience

I was sitting at my desk today, waiting for (ironically enough) a client's new Skype for Business install to complete in a far far away country when I decided - hey, I am not expecting calls today, why not do a quick in-place upgrade to S4B?

Quick was not the operative word here. For reference, I have two pools - once user pool and one Persistent Chat pool (need it for demos :)), and edge pool, and a few trusted apps. Once I began the process - installing the admin tools on an admin server (not Lync), I upgraded the topology for the two pools, published, and so far so good.

The required KB2982006 was not installed on my FE servers so that was where we started, which required a reboot. Had I been wise, I would have disabled the Lync services so I would not have to wait for them to start post reboot of the server only to shut them down again so I could begin the upgrade process. I started the process on both pools, all servers, all at the same time. This was not an issue since all the services are shut down anyway, so there was no apparent communication occurring anyway.

The process started at 2:30pm my local time and the PChat pool finished approximately 30 mins later (less to uninstall and reinstall). However, the user services pool ran for two hours. It appeared that the servers were doing little to nothing during every step so I can only assume there is some fail-safe code slowing the process of uninstall and reinstall down. As a reference, the installation of the new Skype pool was completed (along with the Edge) in under one hour (granted basic install, no config, no uninstall).

I am happy to say that after the long wait, everything came up as expected and worked as expected. The edge pool was the last thing that needed an upgrade but I was waiting to get the inside pools completed prior to starting that process. I suspect it will not take long but will complete tonight and post my timings.

In short - make sure you have the requirements met for in place upgrading and the time set aside. Since the entire pool is down during the process you will have some sort of outage unless users are rehomed.

UPDATE 5/12

The upgrade of the Edge pool went as expected. The total time for upgrade was 30 mins and like the inside pools above, both servers were upgraded at the same time. I did notice that when I upgraded the Edge pool in the topology, the Skype-Skype Federation Search was automatically enabled. While this is a feature I do want, if you do not, or perhaps do not have the port open on the edge servers (outbound 443), then this is something you would want to disable before publishing.