Windows 10 to change to 18 and 30 month support release cycles starting with 1809

[Arthur]

Source: Microsoft (via Windows-Noob)

 

Today Microsoft released a statement due to pressure and complaints from customers about the support life cycle of Windows 10. In this news breaking release the following was stated:

 

• All currently supported feature updates of Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions (versions 1607, 1703, 1709, and 1803) will be supported for 30 months from their original release date. This will give customers on those versions more time for change management as they move to a faster update cycle.
   
   
  
• All future feature updates of Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions with a targeted release month of September (starting with 1809) will be supported for 30 months from their release date. This will give customers with longer deployment cycles the time they need to plan, test, and deploy.
   
   
  
• All future feature updates of Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions with a targeted release month of March (starting with 1903) will continue to be supported for 18 months from their release date. This maintains the semi-annual update cadence as our north star and retains the option for customers that want to update twice a year.
   
   
  
• All feature releases of Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro, and Office 365 ProPlus will continue to be supported for 18 months (this applies to feature updates targeting both March and September).
  

To summarize, what this means for Enterprise customers is that:

 

Windows 10 1809 (and future xx09 releases) will be supported for a full 30 months.

 

Windows 10 1903 (and future xx03 releases) will be supported for 18 months.

 

Note that Windows 10 1607, 1703, 1709, 1803 will be supported for a full 30 months.

 

This is great news for customers struggling to keep up with the constant upgrade life cycle.

 

 

Office 2016 connectivity support for Office 365 services

In addition, we are modifying the Office 365 services system requirements related to service connectivity. In February, we announced that starting October 13, 2020, customers will need Office 365 ProPlus or Office 2019 clients in mainstream support to connect to Office 365 services. To give you more time to transition fully to the cloud, we are now modifying that policy and will continue to support Office 2016 connections with the Office 365 services through October 2023.

 

Shift to a modern desktop

You’ve been talking, and we’ve been listening. Specifically, we’ve heard your feedback on desktop deployment, and we’re working hard to introduce new capabilities, services, and policies to help you on your way. The combination of Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus delivers the most productive, most secure end user computing experience available. But we recognize that it takes time to both upgrade devices and operationalize new update processes. Today’s announcements are designed to respond to your feedback and make it easier, faster, and cheaper to deploy a modern desktop. We know that there is still a lot of work to do. But we’re committed to working with you and systematically resolving any issues. We’d love to hear your thoughts and look forward to seeing you and discussing in more detail in the keynotes and sessions at Ignite in a few weeks!

Edited September 6, 2018 by Arthur

[Primus]

But not great news for education customers who will most likely want to complete major updates like these during summer holidays. Therefore they're pretty stuck on March releases.

[Arthur]

I was thinking the same too. It would have been better to have 30 months for the March releases and 18 months for the September releases.

[Primus]

Let's see if 1809 breaks anything major - we may consider a site-wide re-image in October half term depending on when it's released if it gets us anything useful. Since we don't use O365 I'm thinking it probably won't.

 

It'd also be good if releases actually launched on time too - it's been a while since a release actually launched in the month it's numbered for!

[gshaw]

It's better to test for 6 months on the xx09 release and deploy that rather than chancing your arm with it as soon as it's released. So glad we stuck with 1709 having read of all the random 1803 issues people are experiencing.

[Primus]

The problem is if you're deploying in the summer holidays you're not testing for 6 months on an 09 release you're testing for like ten months.

[thatley]

Cheers for the information Arthur - Interesting to know.

[free780]

Or just upgrade mid year around Christmas with 1809 etc.

[DavR]

Wooohooo! *does a little dance*

 

Shame they chose to give the 30 month cycle to the 09 release, BUT, assuming re-imaging over the summer, that gives ten months testing, plus two full years in service, before we have to re-image again. We've been running with the 03 releases, which meant upgrading every year to stay supported.

[mavhc]

Just let them upgrade, not like much breaks these days

[abaxter2]

Just let them upgrade, not like much breaks these days

Depends if you are using intune for education and used the setup schools pc app to enrol the devices - if so letting the devices upgrade will break the package used to enrol the device, meaning that the settings that you configured via the app / package will no longer apply. For me I still prefer to do my upgrades in summer break, gives me the time to test and make sure all is working as I intended.

[Norphy]

I was thinking the same too. It would have been better to have 30 months for the March releases and 18 months for the September releases.

 

While that would be more convenient for us, you’ve got to consider MS’s release cadence.

 

The March release tends to be the one that releases big new features while the September one is the one that fixes them. From that point of view, it makes more sense for the September release to be the one that’s supported for longer.

[mavhc]

Depends if you are using intune for education and used the setup schools pc app to enrol the devices - if so letting the devices upgrade will break the package used to enrol the device, meaning that the settings that you configured via the app / package will no longer apply. For me I still prefer to do my upgrades in summer break, gives me the time to test and make sure all is working as I intended.

 

Wow, that's bad. If only MS could write Windows software, oh well.

 

I'm sure it'll work ok once they get to version 3

[Arthur]

The March release tends to be the one that releases big new features while the September one is the one that fixes them.

When Microsoft takes six months to fix major bugs in the March release (as was the case with 1803) do you still deploy the March release or the September release?

 

https://twitter.com/jarwidmark/status/1035366989898948608

 

[free780]

If your invested in Office 365 then I'd not be afraid of doing upgrades around Christmas to xx09 . Gradual upgrades are able to catch any issues. The summer break seems to be eroding particularly when security threats happen 365 days a year.

[gshaw]

The problem is if you're deploying in the summer holidays you're not testing for 6 months on an 09 release you're testing for like ten months.

 

That's no bad thing, testing for that long allowed us plenty time to find any oddities with 1709 (fortunately not too much) and get new features running smoothly (Files on Demand with SSO, Start Menu etc.)

 

If your invested in Office 365 then I'd not be afraid of doing upgrades around Christmas to xx09 . Gradual upgrades are able to catch any issues. The summer break seems to be eroding particularly when security threats happen 365 days a year.

 

The monthly Cumulative Updates should be addressing the security threats. Some new security stuff does appear on the newer releases but unlikely to be urgent enough to require jumping versions.

 

Just let them upgrade, not like much breaks these days

 

Have you seen how many threads there are with 1803 issues? I'm glad I resisted the urge to gamble on it this summer.

 

Also just spent days troubleshooting the MDT Task Sequence I've been using all summer because something changed in the recent batch of updates which broke autologon (related to a client we install part-way through). Even when things don't appear to be changing much they still are underneath.

Edited September 10, 2018 by gshaw

[Norphy]

When Microsoft takes six months to fix major bugs in the March release (as was the case with 1803) do you still deploy the March release or the September release?

 

https://twitter.com/jarwidmark/status/1035366989898948608

 

 

I'm... not quite sure what point you're trying to make here. Do I go for the release with the shiny new but buggy features or the release with the fixes for the shiny new features? Well, personally, I'll go for the release with the bugfixes and let other people be canaries.

[DavR]

Have you seen how many threads there are with 1803 issues? I'm glad I resisted the urge to gamble on it this summer.

 

Anything in particular that was a game changer for you? We went 1703 to 1803 without any real problem over the summer.

 

Not contesting your point that version upgrades should be treated seriously and with utmost suspicious, just curious to see if I missed something!

[DavR]

Wooohooo! *does a little dance*

 

Shame they chose to give the 30 month cycle to the 09 release, BUT, assuming re-imaging over the summer, that gives ten months testing, plus two full years in service, before we have to re-image again. We've been running with the 03 releases, which meant upgrading every year to stay supported.

 

HANG ON. I will now retract my previous dance. I've just re-read, 30 months is two and a half years, not three, isn't it? So that's ten months testing, sixteen months service. Oh bobbins, that actually changes sweet FA for us, we'll still need to re-image every $%^ summer to stay in support.

 

Oh well, since we went to 1803 I get next summer free at least, as two and a half years on that should hold us til Sept 2020.

[Norphy]

Anything in particular that was a game changer for you? We went 1703 to 1803 without any real problem over the summer.

 

Not contesting your point that version upgrades should be treated seriously and with utmost suspicious, just curious to see if I missed something!

 

The AppData redirection bug was why I went with 1709 this summer. By the time it was fixed, it was too late to act on it.

[gshaw]

Anything in particular that was a game changer for you? We went 1703 to 1803 without any real problem over the summer.

 

Not contesting your point that version upgrades should be treated seriously and with utmost suspicious, just curious to see if I missed something!

 

For us it was Files on Demand in 1709 that was the game changer. We've been migrating users to OneDrive for a few years now and with 1709 gone from clunky browser uploads and file management to the File Explorer based method we wanted all along (without having to use that horrible WebDAV mapping method or third party software)

 

Also on the security side Exploit Guard (aka Win7 EMET) was also a nice addition.

 

Our initial batch of pilot machines did have 1703 on when we first started testing but always knew 1709 would be the one for our full deployment.

 

1803 was too close to deployment time for my liking and heard that stuff like Start Menu layouts etc. didn't work without recreating them plus there's that weird Google Chrome browsing issue I've read about on here. Very little feature benefit to 1803 over 1709 so risk vs. reward didn't stack up.

 

Will start looking at 1809 when it gets released and testing the update process with that. Will try a few machines via WSUS and others straight reimage (nice and easy as I use thin image build so just need to swap out the WIM once MDT / ADK gets updated)

Edited September 10, 2018 by gshaw

[gaz350b]

We pretty much deploy all year round now.

Test - pilot - non critical teaching devices such as open resource areas - teaching devices - mop up the last few mainly staff laptops .

1709 is in the mop up phases now and Skipping 1803 due to certificate issues.

1809 testing/pilots start term 2 with a select group of users covered at least every area of the organisation.

 

We only deploy what we know is stable over the summer for the reason we don’t want too much trouble to happened come September.

Edited September 10, 2018 by elsiegee40
Edited for language by mods

[mavhc]

If you try to work against Windows 10, start menu layouts, roaming profiles etc it seems like you have more problems, just have to go "whatever" and let it do its thing, because everything else is changing to per user/computer yearly licenced stuff, and/or isn't well tested