Forum Discussion

Spendon Gavekort's avatar
Spendon Gavekort
Copper Contributor
Dec 11, 2017

Please add upgrade packages

For anyone on other clouds than Azure, it's incredibly hard to test out these new server releases, since that would typically involve building vms locally and then uploading to the cloud provider - s...
general
Spendon Gavekort's avatar
Spendon Gavekort
Copper Contributor
Dec 11, 2017

I guess an alternate aspect of this question is: How can I run the "Semi Annual Channel" releases on a cloud provider other than Azure? I have no idea how the "cooperation" between Microsoft and Amazon/Google is, but I would very much like some info regarding this. We're on AWS. I'd very much start building out labs for running Kubernetes on Windows, and right now it seems that I can't.

  • Elden_Christensen's avatar
    Elden_Christensen
    Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
    Dec 11, 2017

    Hi Trond,

    Thank you for the feedback!

    <waves magic wand>

    Ask and you shall receive!!!  :-)

     

    We have just enabled In-place Upgrades, and it will be coming in the next Windows Server Insiders build which is released.  This will simplify the process to upgrade from build-to-build.

    One question... usually when we think about the need for In-place OS Upgrades, it is for traditional applications.  But I see that you are using containers, can you provide more details in what your scenarios are around containers and upgrading the images?

    Thanks!
    Elden

    • Spendon Gavekort's avatar
      Spendon Gavekort
      Copper Contributor
      Jan 23, 2018

      I was really looking forward to this, until I saw the fine print of today's release: You can only upgrade from 1709, not the GA version. Which leaves me dead in the water.

       

      Please provide an update experience from the GA version of 2016 so that any user on any cloud can get access to the insiders builds. We have absolutely no local infrastructure, and I would hate to have to start building local hyper-v clusters just to be able to test a new OS.

      • Matthew Horan's avatar
        Matthew Horan
        Copper Contributor
        Jan 24, 2018

        FWIW, Google's cloud does have 1709 images. We've also managed to "upgrade" a 2016 core installation to 1709 via a sysprep file on AWS, which has worked just fine (though you lose all data). I've also been in touch with Amazon around an official 1709 image, but they've been slow moving. Hopefully we'll see one soon!

         

        Here's the https://gist.github.com/mhoran/a7fa0f8810205239b6b945bc667e4b4e that I provided to the setup.exe from the 1709 installer to get 1709 on AWS. You can mount the 1709 ISO using Mount-DiskImage. Once upgraded, I followed the https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/ec2launch.html to install the EC2 agent.

    • Spendon Gavekort's avatar
      Spendon Gavekort
      Copper Contributor
      Dec 11, 2017

      Awesome, that's really good news. Do you happen to know (cirka) when the next release will be?

       

      As for use case, it's quite simple: We run Kubernetes on AWS, and need to be able to provision Windows-based Kubernetes nodes.

      • Mary Hoffman's avatar
        Mary Hoffman
        Former Employee
        Dec 12, 2017

        Responding to your question as to when the next build will be released - we'll post new images roughly ever two weeks to the Insider community during each development cycle, however, there are a number of factors that could affect the release schedule for preview builds including build stability, holiday schedules, etc. New builds are announced here and in the Feedback Hub application as well as on blogs. Stay tuned!

Resources