Microsoft slips out Windows Server 2022 with extended support for 10 years Microsoft has released Windows Server 2022, an LTS edition that has five years mainstream support and 10 years extended support. Windows Server 2022 is available only as an LTS release, since Microsoft has now abandoned the semi-annual channel in which releases were only supported for 18 months. The operating system reports …
It appears that Microsoft is keen to drive even its on-premises customers to a subscription model.
Subscriptions are largely unregulated, so companies who haven't hopped on a bandwagon are missing out. I remember at one client, about 40% of their revenue was coming from subscriptions that people signed up for and forgot about. Record one I saw was 3 years old since customer last time used the product.
We need a legislation where a company could take up to 24 payments before you perpetually own the license to use the product.
Jetbrains do this with their subscriptions. Once you've paid 12 consecutive months for a version you get a perpetual licence for that version.
MSDN subscriptions (and old Software Assurance model) work in a similar way. Your year one fee is high, then year 2 onwards is lower but you have a perpetual licence to use everything even when you stop paying
>Subscriptions are largely unregulated, so companies who haven't hopped on a bandwagon are missing out. I remember at one client, about 40% of their revenue was coming from subscriptions that people signed up for and forgot about. Record one I saw was 3 years old since customer last time used the product.
>We need a legislation where a company could take up to 24 payments before you perpetually own the license to use the product.
Or, we need employees who actually check the accounts and remind our misbegotten [supp|poster]iors that they are still paying for stuff they req'ed four years ago and haven't used since. Maybe?
I can beat that... a well know retailer I worked at had a Citrix implementation that had been out of support for close to 10 years. That included, but wasn't limited to, Presentation Server & NetScaler products.
The NetScaler devices themselves were so EoL you couldn't even buy the physical devices, but, in that case at least, they could have updated to a supported version of the OS. Except, they couldn't because the version they were on was the last to work with their ancient version of PS.
Not that it stopped the Citrix sales/service manager from flogging them close to £250k of subscription advantage every year. He was not happy when I canned that and couldn't see what he'd actually done wrong.
Yes, I blame the retailer and their staff for allowing it to happen in the first place, but I also blame him for knowing it was happening and failing to advise appropriately just to get his slice of the pie.
Admin centre is reasonable but is missing some decent functionality like patch management, yes you can do servers individually but not roll oout a patch to several servers. Yes I could use SCCM but the cost is ridiculous for servers and it is an awful product to use.
Adding Servers in is right pain and there is no way to automate it or remove old ones, some kind of AD sync would be a step in the right direction.
I tried really hard to use 2016 Core server and manged to for some scenarios (DHCP servers, WSUS, DCs etc) but there is so much server software out there that requires a GUI to run it was pointless effort and powershell does not do everything in simple way, like setting an IP address which is way harder than it should be and can have unpredictable results.
We managed to get almost all of our 2019 servers on core. Only servers with desktop are the Citrix servers, a management server and ADFS, which for $reasons$ still requires the Desktop Experience to manage properly. Everything else is core, even the Exchange server we had to keep on premises to manage synchronised identities.
Really reduces the attack surface. Example is the printnightmare vulnerability. Core doesn't include spooler by default (had to add the feature to our core print server) so not vulnerable.
"...Yes I could use SCCM but the cost is ridiculous for servers and it is an awful product to use..."
"...I tried really hard to use 2016 Core server and manged to for some scenarios (DHCP servers, WSUS, DCs etc)..."
I am curious why you felt the need for Config Manager (it's actually not a bad product but the UI on both the client and the server is fucking atrocious making it incredibly difficult to do what you want easily) when WSUS will do most of the patch management management that you would need? You even went on to say you tried to use WSUS with core.
Microsoft's way of thinking, by the way, isn't necessarily to use core as the point of management, but rather to have a fire-and-forget system and then use the appropriate consoles from a management workstation where possible.
The most important question is, "Has it done a away with the Control Panel?"
It just worked. Which is to Microsoft the reason it should be first in line to be given the 'old yella treatment. Someone could have looked at it and perhaps said, lick of paint there, fix this bug there.
Managing anything in Settings is an excercise in frustration. My particular pain point is Network settings and Regional option. There are others.
Sadly, it's not the only aspect of the Microsoft GUI that causes pain, either.
Agreed.
One of my biggest gripes aside from the poor navigation is that Settings is a single-instanced app. The number of times I've deliberately left one Control Panel window open after making a temporary change in a second Control Panel window is uncountable. That workflow isn't possible in Settings. Go to your Network Settings, change something, navigate to Updates do something, navigate back to Network Settings and undo the change. Why are we forced to re-navigate? Because the UI designers have no experience actually working with the things they're designing.
Agreed on Control Panel. There must be some secret UI school that tells designers to gather research on how users navigate products during their daily use, and then break all the functionality for change's sake.
If one wants to see another fine example, look no further than NetApp's botched release of 9.8 - so many things just don't even work, it downright fraudulent. Then notice how they have worked hard to take an incredible amount of information away from the display altogether.
As more and more software infrastructure moves to containers, Windows Server becomes more obsolete. Containers run Linux. Yes, you can do Windows containers, but no one is really taking them seriously.
Microsoft needs to containerize the pieces of Windows Server that people actually want to run (such as Active Directory) and then just join the rest of the world in container land.
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