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posted by n1 on Monday June 19 2017, @12:44AM   Printer-friendly
from the you-never-go-full-rapid-release dept.

In news seemingly designed to give me an ulcer, Microsoft is moving Windows Server to Rapid Release.

From the Windows Server blog: "Starting this fall, we plan to deliver two feature updates per year, each spring and fall, aligning to the Windows and Office Semi-annual Channel release cycle."

From this systems administrator's perspective, I do not believe Microsoft has shown that they can deliver the QA on updates necessary for rapid release. Personally, I have been testing Windows 10 since 1507 and I have not seen a trend-line of stable consistency within their updates.

I thought Microsoft would be able to get it together but, anecdotally, Windows 10 updates have been consistently problematic since release. From Office 2016 blocking the installation of cumulative updates on 1607 LTSB, broken and inconsistent removal of AppX packages when following Microsoft's own recommendations, and installation behaviors being documented after the fact like the wholesale reinstallation of AppX packages following build updates, every single month's updates brings me trepidation.

The removal of their QA department 'programmatic testers' seems to be the culprit. From infamous August 2015 update debacle to problems like W10 1703 erroring out on every MDT deployment, this wild inconsistency in monthly update quality has leaked into other Windows branches as well. I have been doing monthly security-only updates with plans to do an annual cumulative update to my templates.

What are other SA's plans about rapid release?


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @01:32AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @01:32AM (#527677)

    What are other SA's plans about rapid release?

    Uhhh, grandpa dinosaur, the system administrator role doesn't exist. You were laid off. Check your email. Kthx byenow cya never.

    As a DevOps, I'm totally stoked about rapid release bro! Dude I can't wait to chug beers while I watch the updates!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @03:10PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @03:10PM (#527949)

      RUMBLED! I don't think you're a real DevOps; you appear to be using cromulent sentences (with punctuation and everything!) and they wouldn't be seen dead using as something as appallingly stone-aged as email. They'd say "Hit me up on my flappr.io semantic messaging platform to check out my reciprocal concepts in cascaded memo hierarchies. Leave me a TwtBublS and I'll invite you into our contemporary re-imagining of a total third-generation Smart Ring community".

  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday June 19 2017, @02:13AM (3 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Monday June 19 2017, @02:13AM (#527686) Journal

    Two updates per year is "rapid"?
    That's down from once a week on patch tuesday, right?

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @02:20AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @02:20AM (#527692)

      When riding the rapids, remember to grab onto the pointy rocks.

    • (Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Monday June 19 2017, @11:56AM

      It was two feature updates per year. The monthly patch Tuesday will (most likely) still exist for security updates.

      --
      "It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @03:08PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @03:08PM (#527945)

      Are you sure they didn't mean Rabid Release?

  • (Score: 2) by deimios on Monday June 19 2017, @04:59AM

    by deimios (201) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 19 2017, @04:59AM (#527737) Journal

    I tried a non LTS ubuntu server once. ONCE. Let's just say I was glad I had backups.

  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday June 19 2017, @05:09AM (1 child)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday June 19 2017, @05:09AM (#527739) Journal

    I haaaaaaaaaaaate Windows Server. It's the clunkiest, most unintuitive piece of shit I've ever used and don't get me started on bleepity-bleep Powershell. So of course a bunch of customers want it, and on the bare metal, not in Xen...

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday June 19 2017, @09:34AM

      by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Monday June 19 2017, @09:34AM (#527821) Homepage Journal

      I can't actually say I hate Windows Server because it's been writing my paychecks for the last few months but unless Microsoft makes the in place upgrade story suck less, this is going to go over like a lead balloon. (you can in place upgrade Windows Server; I did that for a client recently because the amount of effort to reinstall was ... excessive, but its not a fun process. Plus we had to double upgrade from 2008 R2 to 2016)

      --
      Still always moving
  • (Score: 4, Funny) by jb on Monday June 19 2017, @06:52AM (3 children)

    by jb (338) on Monday June 19 2017, @06:52AM (#527782)

    Personally, I have been testing Windows 10 since 1507

    Wow -- 510 years of living hell -- my heart goes out to you -- to have spent that long in Windows 10 and not yet worked your way up through purgatory to the promised land, your past sins must have been many & grave indeed...

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @07:26AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @07:26AM (#527795)

      Be thankful that you are unfamiliar with Windows 10 build/release numbers.

      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @05:01PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @05:01PM (#528013)

        whoosh

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @02:59PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @02:59PM (#527936)

      Yes. This is what happens to microsoft operations/admins when they die. Their hell is to manage windows patches for centuries.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by KritonK on Monday June 19 2017, @09:28AM (4 children)

    by KritonK (465) on Monday June 19 2017, @09:28AM (#527819)

    Back when Fedora had just replaced Red Hat Linux as a free OS, I switched our server to it, and hated having to upgrade every six months. When I discovered CentOS, I switched to it and never looked back. You want stability on your server, so updating its OS is the last thing you want to do. When and if you do, you want to do it at your own convenience, not because the latest and (not so) greatest update has just been released.

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday June 19 2017, @04:58PM (2 children)

      by tangomargarine (667) on Monday June 19 2017, @04:58PM (#528007)

      The Windows philosophy spread to Linux via systemd; now systemd has mutated and is re-infecting Windows.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @11:38PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @11:38PM (#528212)

        Let's place the blame where it belongs: it's Red Hat that pays these guys to break Unix/Linux standards so they can claim their employees have the expertise in "modern Linux."
        The last thing they want is to stay a commodity Linux company. It doesn't pay as much and exposes you to too much competition.

        • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday June 20 2017, @02:32PM

          by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday June 20 2017, @02:32PM (#528457)

          Sounds fair.

          --
          "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 1) by jb on Tuesday June 20 2017, @05:23AM

      by jb (338) on Tuesday June 20 2017, @05:23AM (#528343)

      That depends on the OS and how painful/disruptive or otherwise its upgrade process is.

      For example, OpenBSD also has a 6 month release cycle (and provides errata patches to release n only until release n+2 comes out), but a very well thought out, predictable & well documented upgrade process for each release. As a result, upgrading our production systems that run OpenBSD twice a year isn't particularly painful or disruptive.

      On the other hand, upgrading our production systems that run GNU (regardless of which distro) every few years tends to be a major exercise, with huge amounts of planning required to get anywhere near the same level of uptime during the transition...

      As for the various closed source Unix flavours, upgrade pain / disruption / uncertainty is usually such that it's easier just to deploy a new system in parallel, then migrate the data. I imagine the same thing is probably true of Windows (although fortunately we don't run it here). The difference is that most of the closed source Unix vendors still offer a 10+ year upgrade cycle -- and after 10 years you're ready to buy new hardware anyway (so their upgrade processes don't *need* to be as robust) -- not so much after 6 months or less!

  • (Score: 1) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday June 20 2017, @03:46PM

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Tuesday June 20 2017, @03:46PM (#528519) Journal

    We NEED this desperately because.... because............

    Wait, why does a server need rapid releases? The roles behind why you need the server change a lot? Yeah, everyone can use a few more spare flops thanks to code optimization, but I have the Han Solo Bad Feeling that this isn't what's driving this for Microsoft.

    Apparently someone is trying to make us forget the days when the very best server was the one you spun up and, except for critical security patching, left the hell alone to run for hours/days/weeks/months of uptime with no updating.

    --
    This sig for rent.
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