As you probably know last week the September 2016 Cumulative Updates were released. Before you go installing them there are some things you need to know.

If you are the type who reads all of the KBs associated with the updates and the warnings they contain then kudos to you but since most people just download and install we need to have an intervention. Why? Because this update makes some pretty significant changes under the hood to SharePoint. And while those updates are important for SharePoint going forward (some are guessing this CU will be required to get future updates) they make the patching process take FOREVER this time around. It took me close to 3 hours to patch my single server test environment with no content. That is crazy long. And it isn’t just running psconfig it is all parts. Here are some of the outliers.

• Running sts2016-kb3118289-fullfile-x64-glb.exe took 1 hour and 32 minutes
• Step 9 of config wizard took 31 minutes (August update it took 7)
• Step 10 of config wizard took 18 minutes (August took 1 minute)

So the reason I point out these long times is it is real easy to think something is broke. Which might cause you to do something like use Task Manager to kill off one of these process which would lead to fire. So be calm and patient as you work through the process.

More bad news if you have on-prem MySites. Part of those is a site collection called https://sitemaster* gets created to allow for fast site collection creation. Well, that site collection causes a warning because it doesn’t get upgraded. My gut tells me this isn’t an issue and I am trying to confirm that but still another uneasy feeling when you are done.

Luckily for you I cover all of this with my video of doing the install. You can check it out here. Installing September 2016 CU for SharePoint Server 2016. It is part of my series on installing updates. There is a 2013 and 2016 series on YouTube for your viewing pleasure.

Shane