All about Microsoft's new servicing model of delivering updates.

We all must have heard that Microsoft changed the way of delivering the update to all Windows operating systems. See my another blog on this. But still some of us are confused about the contents of this update and other few things.
Monthly Roll-up a.k.a  Security monthly Quality Update: Microsoft has started this terminology since October 2016. Basically it means a single update package will contain all the security updates and other reliability fixes which is called as Monthly roll-up. Each monthly roll-up will supersede the previous month's roll-up. Which means the monthly roll-up of October month will contain all security patches and fixes of October Month and the monthly roll-up of November month will include the security updates and reliability fixes of November month and October month as well, and so on. Hence only one roll-up is required to make a fresh PC to up to date. As earlier Microsoft release this monthly roll-up on "B week" which is second Tuesday of every month. This monthly roll-up will be available through Windows Update, WSUS, SCCM and Microsoft update catalog.
If you use Microsoft baseline security analyzer, you may see some of the security updates missing on the PC even though you have installed the latest monthly roll-up. The reason is the monthly roll-up does not have all the security updates that have been released by Microsoft so far. Microsoft is proactively working to add all patches into monthly roll-up that have been released in the past. Eventually and soon all the patches since the last baseline will be merged up into a single package and this monthly roll-up will become fully cumulative.
Security-only Quality Update: Also from October 2016 Microsoft started releasing a security-only update as well. Unlike the monthly roll-up the security-only update will contain only the security patches of that month. Individual security patches are no longer available. This security-only update will be available through WSUS, SCCM and Microsoft update catalog and will not be published through Windows Update. Security-only update will help the enterprises to download the update as small as possible in size while keeping the machine secure. This update also released in "B week" of every month.
.Net Framework Monthly Roll-up: Microsoft has isolated .Net framework updates from the actual monthly roll-up. Every month Microsoft will release a .Net framework monthly roll-up which will contain all the security updates and other reliability fixes of .Net framework exclusively.Also Microsoft will also release a security-only update for .Net framework which will be available through Microsoft update catalog and WSUS.
Preview of Monthly quality update: This is especially targeting the enterprises to avoid the problems which would happen because of the monthly roll-up installation. This roll-up will contain the preview of all the non-security updates which will come with the next monthly roll-up. This will help the enterprises to test the updates in a test environment before even the updates are released. This preview monthly roll-up will be released in "C week" which is third Tuesday of the month and available via WSUS and Microsoft update catalog.

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