Forum Discussion

James Gibbons's avatar
James Gibbons
Copper Contributor
Jul 16, 2017
Solved

So Windows Server Insiders is only the Core Version. How About Next Month the Full Server Is Avail..

We all understand that Microsoft wants everybody to use Server Core and we understand that in production when at all possible we will use Server Core if it is possible, i.e. (all the programs that we...
General
Jeff-Woolsey's avatar
Jeff-Woolsey
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Apr 25, 2018

Hey folks,

 

Thanks for the note. We've been watching carefully as the industry changes and transforms to embrace new application models such as containers and others. We've also been listening to you as you adopt the Long Term Servicing Channel and the Semi-Annual Channel releases.

 

Here's the short answer: The summary is that customer adoption of SAC is almost entirely containers. SAC adoption on hardware was minimal as most people can’t churn their hardware that quickly. For that reason, we pivoted the SAC releases to containers and application innovation since they can easily take a new change, update a container and publish as part of their CI/CD pipeline. Since containers have no GUI, SAC is Server Core and Nano Server. It literally makes no sense to release a SAC build with a GUI. That's why only LTSC includes GUI.

 

For a detailed explanation, see this blog:
https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2018/03/29/windows-server-semi-annual-channel-update/

  • Matthew Dodd's avatar
    Matthew Dodd
    Copper Contributor
    Apr 29, 2018

    Hey Jeff,

     

    Thanks for your explanation - can I suggest another view?

     

    It sounds like you're saying that the majority of deployments for SAC was for a new(ish) use case (containers). I can understand that deployments to physical hardware would be slow - that would probably follow a buying cycle.

     

    Doesn't your conclusion ignore the number of customers who deploy to virtual machines? That's got to be a very significant opportunity group. They aren't constrained by a buying cycle and yet you've noted that they didn't deploy in significant numbers.

     

    Isn't it possible that you didn't see significant take-up amongst your installed base because they aren't drawn by the feature set of SAC? Isn't it possible that the lack of GUI constrains the appeal across your (presumably enormous) installed base?

     

    For myself, if SAC included the desktop experience and RDS we'd have deployed it by now. I wouldn't want you to think we simply move too slowly to make use of SAC and therefore we can be safely disregarded.

     

    RDS on Window Server 2016 has issues and we're having to wait 2 years to move them forward. If I could get progress on that earlier I'd be overjoyed. For that reason it 'literally makes a lot of sense to include the GUI' on SAC.

Resources