SharePoint Farm Version Number

Many of our folks in the field rely on SharePoint Farm Version number information in Central Administration to compare the patch level between servers. While this number is showing the latest SharePoint Foundation, it doesn’t always mean that you have a completely patched SharePoint farm. The reason, because Microsoft releases many different type of patches:

• Cummulative updates (CU)
• Server packages (Uber packages)
• Public updates (PU)

Stefan Gossner wrote an excellent blog about SharePoint patch terminology and the impact your farm patch level in “SharePoint Patching Demystified” . So, if you want to check patch status for all components in your farm you have to go to Central Administration -> Manage Patch Status (_admin/PatchStatus.aspx). And if you want to check whether you can exchange content DB (or export/import) between farm, you have to go to Central Administration -> Manage Content Database Settings, and compare the Current Schema Version.