Jesus the nickel and diming just keeps going. What’s next? A fee per core to save in notepad?
LOL they’re charging their data center customers $1.50/core/month to avoid reboots caused by their own patch system.
I would rather donate that $1.50/core/month to any valuable FOSS software
Sky TV in the UK charge you to skip commercials, when they put the commercials in the programmes.
Some of us are old enough to remember when the entire point of cable TV was to avoid commercials. Over-the-air antenna TV was supported by ads. But then cable came along, and went “hey, what if we offered a paid TV service, without the ads?”
Then they realized they could just fucking double-dip and show ads anyways. And now they’re charging extra to skip those ads.
And we’ve seen streaming services start to take the same route. Some have started showing ads to paid users, then charging extra to avoid the ads.
Literally every cable and streaming company does that. It’s not the same thing.
Sky TV takes ‘The Last of Us’ from HBO, which has no commercials, puts commercials in it and then charges you if you want to skip those commercials.
Yup. Every cable channel has done that for forty+ years.
Thats not unique or new.But cable TV like all services when it first came about did not have ads. You paid for cable at first because it had no ads compared to antenna.
Doesn’t kpatch (the Linux equivalent) typically need some kind of subscription too? IIRC RedHat does this with RHEL as it’s not available in the derivative distros
It seems a bit of a silly line to draw to me, but it seems to be some kind of industry convention
I’d not heard of this one so I had a look, and these are similar but different things it seems:
kexec lets you switch to another kernel without a full reboot, but you still need to go through the init process of the new kernel apparently. It’s quick compared to a reboot but still involves downtime.
kpatch is actual hotpatching (like this windows thing) where the kernel code is changed in-memory without any down time. The kernel never stops running, so those enterprise customers get the benefit of always running the most secure kernel without having to schedule downtime.
Though apparently kpatch can’t patch everything in the kernel so I can imagine a place for both tools in a server admin’s toolbox when you’re forced to do a non hotpatch.
FTA:
…hotpatching has been available for the longest time for Windows Server Datacenter: Azure Edition, and it will continue without charge…
Enshitification Comes.
Can’t wait until the Windows OS starts demanding you have a credit card on file in order to function.
Oh that is in the pipeline.
Assisted a man with new iPhone yesterday. Can’t download free apps or anything from the appstore without a working card on file.
Disgusting.
Just makes Linux look even better.
Every single thing MS changes anymore does this.
I don’t think many of you read this article and it shows
I haven’t read it, I don’t use Windows so I’m not going to bother. A tl,dr would be nice though.
This is an ad for a third party patching service.
Although hotpatching has been available for the longest time for Windows Server Datacenter: Azure Edition, and it will continue without charge, these security updates for Windows Server 2025 users will cost $1.50 per CPU core per month. Yes, you read that right, per core.
So its not being charged for everyone, only those not running on Azure (which is a huge number of folks). However, Microsoft giving preferential terms to MS software running in Azure instead of elsewhere isn’t new. They’ve been doing this for Windows and MS SQL server for years though Azure Hybrid Benefit.
So its not being charged for everyone, only those not running on Azure (which is a huge number of folks). However, Microsoft giving preferential terms to MS software running in Azure
They probably bundle it into the cost for Azure customers. That’s really not Azure-specific; any server provider could offer complementary hotpatching if they bundle it into their Windows licensing cost.
sounds like microsoft hasn’t learned their lesson with what constitutes legally anti competitive behaviour
This is a terribly written article, full of needlessly convoluted sentences and long paragraphs that make it hard to read.
For all the shark jumping these corporations do, it still shocks me how many people just keep paying. Even other corporations, in this case.
Oh goodie, another reason for useful idiots to defend the prices businesses charge.
Linux servers don’t have this bullshit.
Did you read the article? It’s specifically about hotpatching (patching the kernel without rebooting). You usually need to pay for hotpatching on Linux too, for example using a provider like ksplice or KernelCare, etc.
