What are Express Updates for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016?

Q. What are Express Updates for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016?

A. Microsoft has moved to a monthly cumulative update for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 instead of a variable number of individual updates. This single cumulative update contains all the months updates in addition to all the updates in the previous cumulative updates (hence the name cumulative update). This means for a fresh installation you only need to install from media and install the latest cumulative update. This also means the cumulative updates are getting bigger every month. Right now its around 1 GB for Windows 10 which would mean every month all Windows 10 machines are pulling down 1 GB of updates even though they may already have most of it. In actual fact for machines using Windows Update or Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) an Express Update is used whereby the client only downloads the bits actually required on their machine so instead of pulling down 1 GB they may pull down 50 MB (depending on the month). At time of writing Express Updates are not used by other patch management solutions.