The New Enterprise Update Ring for OneDrive

The OneDrive Sync Team is happy to announce with the R9 payload, which will unblock a set of regulated enterprises to use OneDrive Sync. A key requirement that was blocking heavily regulatory enterprises was the need to be able to manage their updates and audit when new versions will be deployed.  As such, we've repositioned the enterprise update ring to provide the control necessary to unblock customers.

Goals of the new Enterprise Ring

1. Provide customers a way to deploy updates to the sync client
2. Allow enterprises to control and log when an update occurs, without losing our ability to auto update them
3. A way to update the sync client without requiring using external internet bandwidth

Changes to the Enterprise Ring

How it used to work:

Updates in OneDrive flow from internal or private rings to external rings as verification and validation of the build occurs. When the team is confident in the update, it is then released to the next ring, where the next set of users are then automatically updated.

In the old model, the enterprise ring was simply the last ring for customers to update.

How it will work going forward:

Sync Client updates will still follow the same order, however once an update has been fully validated in the production ring, there will be a sixty day delay before the enterprise ring auto updates.

During this sixty day period, customers can go deploy the update on their own accord, allowing them to record exactly when their software is updated. Additionally, since they are the ones deploying the update, they can do so without using external bandwidth.

We've updated our deployment and update documentation here