Windows Server deserts Microsoft’s WaaS

Microsoft last month abandoned a four-year experiment during which it delivered multiple updates to Windows Server each year and will instead re-employ the upgrade-every-few-years practice it had codified for decades.

The change was the Redmond, Wash. company’s greatest retreat yet from the accelerated release and upgrade regime of Windows, which it adopted first for the nameplate’s client software and then later for Server.

“Starting with Windows Server 2022 there is one primary release channel available, the Long-Term Servicing Channel,” Microsoft explained in documentation on Windows Server release tempo. “With the Long-Term Servicing Channel, a new major version of Windows Server is released every 2-3 years. Users are entitled to 5 years of mainstream support and 5 years of extended support.”

In the same document that named the Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) as the sole version of Windows Server 2022, Microsoft also implied — without putting it plainly — that the Semi-Annual Channel (SAC), the name for the release line that delivered two updates annually, is dead and defunct for Server.

Previously-issued SAC releases for Windows Server that still have support owed to them, including 1909, 2004 and 20H2, will receive that support, Microsoft said. There will be no future SAC releases, however.

SAC no more

In June 2017, Microsoft announced it would begin to deliver SAC updates to Windows Server starting in the fall with the refresh designated as 1709 in the company’s then-standard yymm format. The idea, Microsoft said, was to synchronize Windows Server’s release cadence with that of Windows 10 and Office 365, both of which were updated twice annually as part of an accelerated tempo begun in 2015 with the debut of Windows 10.