CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsazurewindows-update
MrLane
MrLane

Reputation: 1728

Azure: What if a guest OS update breaks my application?

We are investigating the option of shifting our small company's infrastructure to Azure PaaS (Websites, Cloud Services, SQL) as we do not have the resources to maintain our infrastructure at scale and it takes a lot of developer time to keep our current servers maintained.

The last problem we have with moving the Azure PaaS is that the control over updates seems somewhat limited according to this article Azure enforces that you remain within two patch versions of the guest OS that Microsoft rolls out.

Aside from the fact that that places a testing burden on us (we would have to test that software works with new OS releases forced upon us) there is nothing about what can be done if an Azure update DOES break one of our applications...and it has happens before with Windows Updates.

How is this supposed to be delt with? Has no one else had this problem?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 591

Answers (2)

Pedro Perez
Pedro Perez

Reputation: 111

I would like to add that you may want to have your whole deployment replicated, but always running on the latest available patch.

This way you could test updates with weeks in advance before updating your production environment.

Upvotes: 1

HopelessN00b
HopelessN00b

Reputation: 452

This is typically dealt with by updating your applications and/or fixing your custom code to work with newer patches and/or updates.

There's really very little else you can do. I've worked at places that didn't, and seen the results of blocking an incompatible update long-term (or turning off updates altogether), and it's far worse than just maintaining your whatever. Failure to do so is how you end up paying a group of consultants thousands of dollars an hour to troubleshoot a code base or application that isn't compatible with anything made in the last decade.

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions