Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard – Updates Required After A Fresh Install And Update Order

We just rebuilt one of our servers to provide file services for our network.

Out of the box, this particular Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard full GUI install has approximately 93 updates waiting:

Windows Update on the server sees things a bit differently:

However, once we have run the full gamut of updates shown above there are guaranteed to be more updates waiting to update the updates! :)

The first step in our update process will be to run the Windows Server 2008 R2 security updates. We will then run any other updates that may be waiting. We will not update .NET until we have a backup of the box which has just been configured but not run yet.

Depending on the OS that has just been installed we would run .NET updates in the following order:

1. .NET 1
1. .NET 1.1.x
2. .NET 1.2.x etc.
2. .NET 2
1. .NET 2.1.x
2. .NET 2.2.x etc.
3. .NET 3
1. Same pattern as above for each subsequent version.

A reboot would be done in between each version of .NET and if the server is critical then we would run a backup in between each version as well.

We will also leave out the BPA updates until we have all of the necessary core updates completed successfully.

Off the server goes on the first round:

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

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