Cumulative Updates Vs Update Rollups.

Description of the standard terminology that is used to describe Microsoft software updates
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/824684/description-of-the-standard-terminology-that-is-used-to-describe-micro

You can see that in the Microsoft terminology there is nothing such as "Cumulative Updates". You can download Service Pack, Update Rollup, Monthly Rollup and so on but no cumulative updates. Maybe you are thinking "How is that possible? I can see cumulative updates on my computer!"

The important word here is "Classification". This word includes all 13 "kinds" of updates (as per MS terminology). However, some of them are cumulative updates. It means that cumulative updates can be for example Critical Updates, Security Updates, Update Rollups...

The picture will explain it.

On the screenshot you can see "Cumulative Updates", what do they mean by that ?

There is also Monthly Rollup and Update Rollup.... they sound the same

An update rollup is a cumulative update; the terms are basically interchangeable. A cumulative update is an update package that includes all updates for a particular product up to the time that the cumulative update is released. From the end-user perspective, this simplifies the process of updating: no matter when you update, instead of downloading and installing each individual hotfix, then repeating that process until all updates that depend on other updates are installed, you simply download and install the latest cumulative update. Easy-peasy (heh heh...usually).

A monthly rollup is simply a cumulative update that's released on a monthly basis. It will include everything in the previous monthly rollup, plus any hotfixes released since then.

An update rollup only contains the patches, a Cumulative update is a full installation.
Because each CU is a full installation of Exchange that includes updates and changes from all previous CU's, you don't need to install any previous CU's or Exchange 2016 RTM or Exchange 2019 RTM first.https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/plan-and-deploy/install-cumulative-updates?view=exchserver-2019

That's true for Exchange, but (obviously) not true for Windows; a cumulative update for Windows is still just an update, not a full OS. I don't work with SQL Server, so I don't know if it's true for that product. Based on a little Googling, though, I don't think so.

So Update Rollup and Cumulative Update in windows mean the same thing when it comes to patching OS. ?

A cumulative update is an update package that includes all updates for a particular product

So Cumulative update or Update Rollup are geared towards specific Product (ie, windows defender, Internet Explorer,etc...)

Monthly Rollup : is a Cumulative Update for all products (ie, windows defender, Internet Explorer,etc...) released on Monthly Basis.

The "cumulative" update is a general term for updates that are packaged together for easy deployment. Which types of updates are named as "cumulative"? -> Service Pack, Update Rollup, Monthly Rollup and Preview of Monthly Rollup.

So Update Rollup is a cumulative update. But you cannot say that Cumulative Update is just a different name for Update Rollup.

Thank you Guys..
I will come back to this topic when I set up my LAB