Microsoft has announced it will require paid subscriptions for Windows Server 2025 hotpatching, a service that enables admins to install security updates without restarting.
The company urged admins to try hotpatching free of charge before it becomes generally available in July, when they'll have to pay for a subscription to test it.
However, Redmond also warned those currently testing Windows Server 2025 hotpatching in preview to disenroll on or before June 30 so that they're not automatically subscribed in July.
"Hotpatching for Windows Server 2025, made available in preview in 2024, will become generally available as a subscription service on July 1st, 2025. With hotpatching, we are taking what was previously an Azure-only capability and now making it available to Windows Server machines outside of Azure through Azure Arc," Microsoft said.
"Hotpatching is available at no charge to preview now, but starting in July with the subscription launch, hotpatching for Windows Server 2025 will be offered at a subscription of $1.50 USD per CPU core per month."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Gaaark on Sunday May 04, @01:14PM (5 children)
Why are you using Windows server?
Why are you TESTING Windows server for them if you aren't going to be grand-fathered in for free?
Why would you 'try hotpatching', at their urging, for free knowing you'll have to pay for it eventually?
Why are you so stupid?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 5, Touché) by Thexalon on Sunday May 04, @01:58PM (2 children)
Most likely: Because management can override the decisions of techies, and managers in general are uncomfortable with relying on anything that doesn't have a company logo attached to it.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 04, @03:08PM (1 child)
With Microsoft we're better off running dumb terminals running on their cloud servers. Cuts our IT costs to almost nothing, and we can blame them when it breaks down.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aafcac on Sunday May 04, @06:15PM
Isn't that the sort of thing that IBM depended on for decades? It's great until it's not, at which point, you're probably screwed in terms of migrating without paying a literal fortune.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday May 04, @02:13PM
What gets me is that for these patches, you still need to be prepared to go into offline or for things to go wrong due to MS not doing enough testing. The best case scenario is that you can go back online sooner. But you get b to pay for it
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mcgrew on Sunday May 04, @04:30PM
Why are you so stupid?
Perhaps it isn't stupidity, but ignorance. I "hotpatch" my Linux box almost daily, not at their insistence.
People use Windows servers instead of the far more practical Linux for the same reason they drive gasoline Rube Goldberg firetraps rather than EVs: they don't know that an EV is to pistons what a Model-T was to a horse and carriage, or that Linux is to Windows what an EV is to a gasoline car.
The corporations aren't about to deliberately let you have any information that will hurt their profits, whether you make automobiles or operating systems.
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader