Patch Management Solution support for Microsoft Windows 10 monthly delta updates

Products

• Patch Management Solution for Windows

Issue/Introduction

Patch Management Solution for Windows 7.6 HF4 and above supports Microsoft Windows 10 monthly delta updates in addition to cumulative updates.

Resolution

• Windows 10 monthly delta update package is a smaller file that contains only the fixes for the selected month.
  The delta updates are applicable to the computers that have cumulative or delta updates installed for the previous month.
  NB! The delta updates are available only for patching Windows 10 Anniversary (1607) release.
   
• Windows 10 monthly cumulative update package is a large file that grows each month because it contains all the fixes for the selected month and all previous months.
  The cumulative updates are applicable to the computers that do not have cumulative or delta updates installed for the previous month.

Symantec recommends using the peer-to-peer downloading feature for effective distribution of Windows 10 monthly cumulative or delta updates in the environments without package servers.
For more information about configuring peer-to-peer downloading, see the KB article TECH257251.

Note:

• Windows 10 monthly delta and cumulative updates will service Windows 10 versions earlier than 1809 until February 2019, when delta updates will be discontinued.
• Starting from the patch management metadata for Windows release 7.3.194, Patch Management Solution supports new compact update packages that replace delta and cumulative updates for Windows 10 version 1809 and later. For more information about compact updates support, see the knowledge base article TECH251853

How to determine which Windows 10 monthly software updates your managed computers require

Patch Management Solution uses the metadata that includes the direct URLs for downloading Windows 10 monthly cumulative or delta update packages from the Microsoft Windows Update Catalog. The packages that are released together are grouped into software bulletins. Patch Management Solution has its own naming convention for the cumulative or delta update bulletins that do not have Microsoft bulletin IDs. For example, in the patch management metadata for Windows release 7.2.8, CSWU-48 is the name of the bulletin that includes both March 2017 cumulative and delta updates.



For more information, see the KB article INFO3144.

You enable the bulletin with the cumulative and delta updates for distribution in the Distribute Software Updates wizard when you create a software update policy. Patch Management Solution automatically determines which cumulative and delta updates are applicable to your client computers, and then delivers the required updates to the appropriate computers.

Patch Management Solution provides the system assessment scan tool that detects applicable and installed updates on your client computers with the software update plug-in installed. The system assessment scan checks the registry value UBR (HKLM" Key="SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion" Value="UBR" (Update Build Revision)) and determines the type of update that a computer requires as follows:

• The delta update is assigned if the build version equals N-1 (N = currently available build version).
• The cumulative update is assigned if the build version equals N-2 or less.

The computer can receive only one type of update but never both.

When the scan reports to Notification Server that the cumulative or delta updates are required for a managed computer and the bulletin with these updates is enabled for distribution, the update is sent to the software update plug-in installed on that computer. The software update plug-in ensures that the updates are applicable and not already installed, and then installs them.
For more information, see the help topic Configuring Windows System Assessment Scan policy.

For the important information about the initial release of the delta updates in the patch management metadata for Windows 7.2.8 release, see the KB article TECH257241.

You can view the cumulative or delta updates and the number of computers in your environment to which the updates are applicable in the Windows Compliance by Update report.