Stop the "Windows update madness" on WS2016!
Dear Microsoft Windows Server team. We would like complete control over when we would like our our WS2016 to install windows updates! No more slow / timeconsuming server restarts because of "Getting Windows ready. Do not turn off your computer" messages when we just would like a quick restart of a production server.. No more TiWorker.exe using 100% of a CPU core during "*********" and so on.. And please fix the issues with '2017-08 Update for Windows Server 2016 for x64-based Systems (KB4035631)' asap. Thank you.
KjB
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98 comments
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Karl Wester-Ebbinghaus (@tweet_alqamar)
commented
Hi Brad what does prevent you and others from using Server 2019? Be aware Server 2021 is even better seeing updates and other features and fixes and does likely arrive late 2021. Even, thanks to MSFT listening to my feedback they fixed a nasty issue in DSAC that was present since 2012.
I was told several times, Microsoft will not fix this issue, that's a feedback from the product team.
Reason: LTSC forbids a needed backport of the update stack from Win10 1703 (one version later) by definition.a second thing is they say there is no impact as you can do automatic updates and restart policies so you don't have to sit and wait. This point is pointless as the downtime of a Server is given for hours.
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giuseppe
commented
Just complain is easy but we cannot stay still for the apple falling down to eat it.
I have almost 900 windows server to maintain.I suggest you to automate this "monkey job" using a specific suite or create it by your own as I did : an agent on every server driving a script to download and install the update from a wsus server. You can find vbscript programs on internet based on the Microsoft.Update object class. Some samples can be find here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/wua_sdk/searching--downloading--and-installing-updates. Save a lot of time (and money) and spend it just to fix the exceptions, in my case I have to do manual work for 1% or less of the total. -
Brad Lape
commented
My life: Working on updates 100%....
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Anonymous
commented
Same here ... server for 4h out of business ... cumulative updates are a big error from my point of view...
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Anonymous
commented
Same for me... Just sat there 2hrs with the "Do not turn off" message.., then when the server came up, we now had no internet access.. Nothing had been touched, the VM's on this server were all up and talking but nothing could get to the internet.. Another reboot, this time with a chkdsk and 90 mins later the server is back up and the internet is now working.. All this at 23:00 at night.., so got to bed eventually around 03:00am.. Not good... Needs to be a FREE upgrade to Sevrer 2018... Server 2016 is pants...
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Phil
commented
I spend half my life building W2016 machines and most of that time seems to be spent staring at this screen. If it really needs an hour to think about starting update installation, please can we have some kind of time remaining notification?
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[Deleted User]
commented
Same story still today Aug 2020.
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Anonymous
commented
updates are very slow on Windows 2016. This is unacceptable and a huge nightmare for Sysadmins.
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Anonymous
commented
Well last time i updated an exchange server 2016 to cu 15 i took 3 hours to reboot the VM and exchange services to be active again. Holy moly... Never saw this before.
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Freddie
commented
Yeah we run Linux **** and it hangs almost always takes hours to updates for a few servers and do not even try to use it for DR, so stop the MS non-sense it works and why Fortune 500 companies make it the choice OS and some flavors of Linux because they get stuck with a vendor app to support that everyone is scared to even reboot?
So I guess there are ton of high level Corporate Excecs making decisions on ease of use and what works pretty much..
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Gary Turner
commented
Every time I go through the pain of updates on Windows Servers I start to think about switching to Linux for the core infra.
We run a good number of Hyper-V hosts, today one just decided to install updates and reboot during the defined 'active hours' causing major disruption to the users at a site.
In terms of server product, especially a hyper-v hosts I have no idea what active hours is. You are allowed a maximum of 18 active hours in a day on a server whose role naturally will be 24x7. Otherwise al of the VMs on the host must share its active hours.
The whole thing is madness.
We also run VMware as a Hypervisor, that runs solidly and does not require anything like the same level of updates.
I agreed with the comments here MS need to learn that a desktop update system cannot be used on a server.
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Adrian
commented
Win2016 and KB4550947 taking aagggeeeeeeessss, tbh I'm absolutely embarrassed I've recommended this piece of garbage to some clients back in 2018, it's simply unmanageable.
Do something M$ about this, it's a shambles. -
Mike
commented
Guys, I have a friend who works at MS. Nobody uses Windows Server there.
They all run Linux. Not kidding. Everyone knows it's a pile of garbage. We need to abandon this architecture NOW. Stop paying MS millions in per-month license fees charged based on the amount of RAM you have in your machine. Guess what: Windows Server is for suckers!
You've been HAD!
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Delcio
commented
2020 an still not fixed, Microsoft getting worse !!!!
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Anonymous
commented
See the following discussion here: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/250914a1-b013-434a-baa0-639e31a839dd/whats-with-the-really-slow-windows-updates-on-2016?forum=ws2016
Removing Windows Defender gave me a boost in installing the updates.
Hopefully this can help somebody else as well. -
Anonymous
commented
2 years and still not fixed ...
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Paul Anderson
commented
So at least two years have passed since this problem was first observed and MS haven't fixed it. In my experience with MS systems, if an issue remains unresolved for this long it will never be resolved. Give up folks. Microsoft don't care. I'm going to recommend we switch our new server baseline from 2016 to 2019.
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van der Zwaan VOF
commented
When will this ever get solved :-(
It's so frustrating! With 1 host server and 4 Hypver-V servers, it takes almost a day to update. And I have several confugrations like these! >:( -
AZSmitty
commented
It's hard to believe that MS has let this issue fester for so long. There are major corporations, like mine, who have hundreds if not thousands of Windows 2016 servers in their fleet of servers. Having a system down for 1 or 2+ hours simply to apply patches is totally unacceptable. MS fix this issue now!
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Anonymous
commented
It is a new descent with the update process in Server 2016. First, after migration from 2012R2 to 2016 on a new SDD - on the same machine - i thought that must be a joke. Reboot after cumulative Update Package lasts usually more than 1 hour. Today the patch 09-2019 takes one and a half.... Now I am not laughing anymore, I am only happy that the machine comes alive at all yet....
