VMM 2012 R2 UR6 - x64 or x86?? Which is which??

Well, I was about to call it a night and noticed a tweet from a friend.

Ermm.. ok, really???
So I had to go look myself.

So the two cab files you get when downloading the VMM console update from the Microsoft Catalog are:

• SC2012 R2 - vmm Console x64_SC2012 R2 - vmm Console x86-all-kb3050947_adminconsole_amd64_efbde801498984d5bdd823cad41a600a1b0adfc0.cab
• SC2012 R2 - vmm Console x86_SC2012 R2 - vmm Console x64-all-kb3050947_adminconsole_i386_dcc1fbae0c6a6af7f5750814f4c5274eb9f6d22c.cab

Notice the repetition of the "bitness" in the filename, it's not consistent.
For example the console update that starts with x64 then changes to x86 before then mentioning amd64 but contains the update for x64.

Fine, just looks like a slight naming confusion.

However...
I then downloaded the same KB file from the MS Catalog site, but from my office connection as I was going to update my VMM server, which gave me this file:

• SC2012 R2 - vmm Console x64_SC2012 R2 - vmm Console x86-all-kb3050947_adminconsole_i386_dcc1fbae0c6a6af7f5750814f4c5274eb9f6d22c.cab

Which is different to the first "x64" file from the other PC

• SC2012 R2 - vmm Console x64_SC2012 R2 - vmm Console x86-all-kb3050947_adminconsole_amd64_efbde801498984d5bdd823cad41a600a1b0adfc0.cab

Notice the very subtle change in file name?

What is worrying however, is the contents of these files are completely different. One is the x64 update while the other is the x86 update.

 

 

Conversely the "x86" cab file contains the x64 update.

 

I'm slightly bemused how downloading the same update from the same site but on two different systems gives completely differently named files/content. Not to mention just being generally confused by the file name full stop.

 



I'm not entirely sure what's going on here and what if any impact to updating via WSUS/MSU/ConfigMgr but have reached out to others to test their downloads and MS and will update if/when I hear more.

 

 

** Update 29/04/15 **

 

So this is purely a cosmetic thing and has no impact on patching via WSUS etc.

The last reference in the file name is the important part, so i386 or amd64 will denote which patch is contained in the cab file if you need to know before extracting.

 

 

 

This isn't new either, it's gone unnoticed by myself for all the previous update rollups (where it is the same) as it looks like I've got into the routine of downloading, extracting and storing in a logical folder structure without even looking at the cab file names :)