Installing March Public Update for SharePoint 2013 in a CloudShare Environment

Microsoft released its first public update for both SharePoint Foundation and Server 2013 last March. As you can read in several blogs on the Internet about this update, it is a mandatory requirement in order to install new SharePoint updates coming in the feature. For instance, you can read this statement in Stefan Gossner’s blog post (Note: Stefan is Senior SharePoint Escalation Engineer at Microsoft):

Due to a change in the package configuration introduced after SharePoint 2013 RTM the March Public update is a mandatory requirement in order to install subsequent SharePoint Updates.

In this article, I will show you step-by-step how to install this first public update for SharePoint Server 2013 in a CloudShare Environment.

Links for Downloading the Public Update Bits

First thing you have to do is download the public update bits and read carefully the related KB article describing the problems and issues fixed by the update:

• SharePoint Foundation 2013 public update bits & KB article:
  • http://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/download/details.aspx?id=36987
  • http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2768000
• SharePoint Server 2013 public update bits & KB article:
  • http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36989
  • http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2767999

For a SharePoint Server 2013 RTM environment, you do not need to download and install the SharePoint Foundation public update. Just install the one for SharePoint Server.

Installing the SharePoint Server 2013 March Public Update

As you will see, installing the March public update for SharePoint Server 2013 RTM is quite straightforward:

• Once you have download the bits, double click in the .exe file and accept the Microsoft Software License Terms.

• Once you have accepted these terms, the installation process will start. Since this process will take more than a couple of hours, be patient and use this “free time” to do other productive things 🙂

• After some waiting, you will be asked to reboot your server. Just do it.

• Once you have rebooted your server and it’s up again, run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard.

• As always, click the “Yes” button in the warning message about what services have to be started or reset during the configuration process.

• In the next window, simply click the “Next” button in order to start the configuration wizard.

• At this point, just wait some minutes until the wizard has done all the configuration steps.

• In the last Configuration Wizard window that appears, click the “Finish” button.

• Once the configuration ends, open the SharePoint 2013 Central Administration in order to check everything is working fine. In the home page of the Central Administration, just click the “Check product and patch installation status” in the “Upgrade and Migration” section.

• Finally, simply check that the public update has been applied to your server. As you can see in the below screenshot, the update has been applied to some of the core services of your SharePoint 2013 farm.

And that’s all about installing the March Public Update for SharePoint Server 2013 in a CloudShare environment. Happy CloudSharing!