Consolidated list of Windows 2008 R2 SP1 Hotfixes

An updated list of hotfixes for DPM servers, consolidated into a standard list of hotfixes for Win2k8 R2 SP1!

Tech.Ed Australia starts up this week, and I'll be presenting 4 sessions on DPM. One of my sessions is "Making Data Protection Manager Hum!", and you can bet that I'll be talking about hotfixes as part of this - it's not by any means the only consideration, but it's definitely an important one. I've written a couple of blog posts already on recommended hotfixes for DPM servers on Windows 2008 R2 SP1, but my list of hotfixes has since expanded. It's high time to consolidate the previous hotfixes and include the new ones.

To recap briefly, DPM is a resource intensive application. It will make the most of CPU, memory, storage, and network given a decent workload. As a result, like any other application that pushes the OS and hardware, it will more than likely trigger load-based bugs in the underlying OS. This isn't particularly different from other backup apps, even on other platforms - I was dealing with Novell Netware ABENDs with ARCServe back in the 90's, and I've seen it on Linux and Mac OS X too.

Bearing in mind that the backups of today - especially in DPM - do so much more than ever before, there's nothing new here. Keep the drivers up to date. Keep the firmware update. And patch.

I will elaborate somewhat further on my hotfix approach than in previous posts. In researching a given problem and possible hotfixes, I will often stumble across unrelated hotfixes that nonetheless match another issue that I've noted. Equally, there are sometimes hotfixes which address the same subsystem for different reasons, which I'll also flag for review. My primary objective is to resolve the bug at hand, but I also like to keep on top of post-service pack hotfixes and build a standardised list where possible. Therefore after testing hotfixes that directly address the problem at hand, I will also test these other hotfixes, and if deemed suitable, include them in my standard list.

It should be noted that there are definitely plenty of hotfixes which I dismiss altogether - not having seen the behaviour, or being otherwise completely irrelevant. Nonetheless, the list of fixes I build is generally quite extensive and broadly applicable.

For this list, I've highlighted certain fixes. Fixes in red relate directly to DPM and related subsystems, and tend to relate to load-based bugs. These have been my primary concern, typically involved STOP 0x000000D1 and STOP 0x0000007E messages. While the past two posts did a lot to resolve this, it didn't entirely remove the problem - but now I have a new fix or two. Previously I highlighted 2 fixes which explicitly reference DPM, but all of these should be looked into. Note that there are MPIO fixes which are effective only if you are using MPIO.

Fixes in green relate directly to Windows startup and performance; this is another problem area with DPM that has caused me some issues. Essentially, it's possible for DPM to become so slow at startup that the Component Based Servicing feature of Windows 2008 and up will time out. In this case, hotfixes will stop applying altogether, and you'll face the aggravating "Failure configuring updates" error, involving a long and drawn out rollback. DPM can be particularly affected because of the number of VSS snapshots it holds across multiple disks; there are a lot of factors contributing to this, but these hotfixes seem to be effective in relieving the issue.

Other uncoloured fixes from my standard list are not necessarily any less important - you should evaluate them according to your own situation. Many of these were left out of my previous posts, but I include them for the sake of completeness, as well as making this a useful list of hotfixes for a broad range of Win2k8 R2 SP1 bugs. Not all of them apply to all roles, including DPM. I do not account for any hotfixes being replaced by later ones, because this is more than adequately handled by Windows itself.

While I don't necessarily recommend applying all of these blindly - always test for yourself! - it's quite easy to do a bulk install of all hotfixes. You can run a batch file from the folder containing the hotfixes, containing just the following:

for %%M in (*.msu) DO wusa "C:\Fixes\%%M" /quiet /norestart

(where C:\Fixes\ should be replaced by the full path to the fixes)

This works quite nicely, and is far faster than clicking each hotfix in turn. It'll only apply the hotfixes that are applicable to the current machine. You can then restart at the end, and if you're not susceptible to the "Failure configuring updates" problem, Component Based Servicing will take care of the rest.

With all this in mind, here's the list!

Consolidated List of Recommended Hotfixes

Hopefully my standard list will be of use! You should test them before rolling out live - and as always, the Microsoft advice is to only deploy fixes if they apply to your situation. Nonetheless, the highlighted fixes in particular have been very effective in resolving my primary issues.

I applied a hotfix to Twitter but it keeps rolling back: @OhCrap

Browse more posts:

Possibly related posts:

Alienware M17x R3 - My new best friendSo I finally got my brand new notebook ... and I love it! Here's the rundown!
In Conversation with Delicate GeniusMichael Kordahi (aka The Delicate Genius) delivered the keynote at REMIX10 back in June and will be opening the proceedings at TechEd Australia 2010. We caught up for a wide-ranging conversation, touching on trends in application and web development, online...
Additional Windows 2008 R2 SP1 Hotfixes - April 2012Updating my list of hotfixes for DPM (and other) environments. It's been a while!
Windows 2008 R2 SP1 and DPM 2010Recent stability issues have led me to develop a new list of recommended hotfixes for Windows 2008 R2 SP1 with DPM 2010 ...
More on Windows 2008 R2 SP1 and DPM 2010Continuing on my investigation of a recent stability problem with Win2k8 R2 SP1 and DPM 2010, I've found more hotfixes to recommend

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Posted in: [IT Pros], [Network Infrastructure / Architecture], [Windows Server]

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