Last-minute DST Patches Create Headaches for Exchange Admins

By Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews

March 9, 2007, 11:04 AM

While Microsoft began releasing software patches that take account of the new, earlier shifts to Daylight Savings Time months ago, panic calls from admins everywhere suggest that businesses may be waiting until the last minute to install them.

As a result, an Info-Tech Research Group bulletin this morning describes, Microsoft's technical support personnel only just this week discovered that its various patches for Windows, Exchange Server, Outlook, and other tools should be installed in a precise order, otherwise they may not actually be patching networks.

According to an Info-Tech Advisor bulletin begun last Tuesday and updated since, in response to advice from Info-Tech and others, Microsoft updated its DST Knowledgebase bulletin to reflect a more proper order of installation for all the various patches the company has released. However, Info-Tech cautions, the older edition of Microsoft's instructions remain online, and is still being linked to by other documents. As a result, some of the consulting firm's business clients are reporting problems that may have been caused by separate divisions of their companies following two (or more) different sets of instructions.

As Microsoft is now suggesting, DST patches for Windows must be applied initially - first for the server, then patches for all clients. Next, revised and updated hot-fix tools should be downloaded and applied, the purpose of which will be to rebase appointments so that they don't appear one hour later than scheduled for all of next week, after the operating system patches are applied.

Microsoft suggests that admins have users apply the client-side version of this hot-fix tool themselves, as a way of "empowering clients to rebase their own appointments," invoking the phrase in a way Jack Kemp might never have associated with it before.

Only after the hot-fix tools have been deployed can the Exchange DST patch for Collaboration Data Objects be deployed. CDOs are the data that Outlook clients exchange with one another in order for workers to see each other's scheduling items, tasks, and shared contacts. With Exchange Server 2007, these CDOs are now shared in a less centralized, more "peer-to-peer" fashion - which means, even if Exchange is properly patched, the CDOs might not be updated in turn, since the 2007 version doesn't utilize the same "central repository" architecture as the 2003 version.

Recent editions of mobile communications software, including Windows Mobile 6 and recent updates for BlackBerry and Good Mobile devices, also utilize these new GDOs - which is apparently why it's even more critical that the server OS, client OS, and middleware be patched first, in that order, prior to patching CDO separately.

Earlier this week, Info-Tech's consultants, as well as its own internal IT department, faced the patch deployment issue head-on, and in so doing ended up instructing Microsoft as to the proper itinerary for patch deployment, according to a company statement this morning. Those new instructions may have led to Microsoft's issuance of a new Knowledgebase instruction set for DST, although it apparently did not lead to the removal of the old instructions - which has yet to happen.

In a statement this morning, Info-Tech research team leader Darin Stahl said, "Businesses have known that this was coming since the U.S. Government announced the change last fall. However, unlike the Year 2000 issue when everyone had years to prepare, this change was relatively rapid. Microsoft just introduced their tool for Exchange a month ago, and unfortunately it doesn't work properly...Hopefully there will be some less stressed IT managers, thanks to the information on our Web site."