Technet Advice

[Mercutio]

Basically, yeah.

But when you're talking about investing in 32 CPU NUMA setups and all the tech necessary to feed one, you probably also have a dedicated Cisco guy and a dedicated Oracle guy on hand as well.
When I worked in process control it was pretty typical for Honeywell to have an on-site guy for anybody who bought a UxS solution. That's probably standard procedure in industry.

 

[ddrueding]

Not only do you typically get a guy, but that guy gets a room full of hardware. I used to have a Dell guy, and everything in the room still belonged to Dell, but was an exact copy of everything we had in production. Any failures were directly serviced by him from his parts in his room. He then did the warranty paperwork and made sure he kept all the spares.

A wonderful arrangement if you have the volume to convince them to do it.

 

[MaxBurn]

Got a survey from msft about the technet sub. Slammed them on activation and getting it going but the rest has been very nice. Mentioned our company is likely going to be skipping 8.

 

[MaxBurn]

Technet expiring soon. Just let it and renew at some time in the future?

 

[Mercutio]

They changed the way that new or renewed subs work so that you have to use all the activations on a single key before you can request another one. This means you can't collect all your product keys and .ISOs on the first day of your sub and never visit again. They also removed some products from the subscriber area that members used to have access to, like individual MS Office products and Home Versions of Windows.

This is kind of short sighted, since Home versions of Windows *do* behave in a different fashion from business versions for some crucial components like the Credential Manager, and it's incredibly useful to have access to a painless way to test that stuff, and likewise there are plenty of times that being able to shift to a different version of Access or Outlook for testing or demonstrations is valuable, but the end result is that Technet is less abusable than it was a year ago.

They're also providing far fewer activations per product key for new products. I only got 15 installs of Windows 8 and I actually, legitimately ran out of them while messing with the testing and deployment tools in Windows Server.

So anyway: Wait until you need it.

 

[MaxBurn]

Thanks. I noticed they had a statement on those removals and changes. Fortunately I was able to harvest two product keys for the stuff I really wanted.

 

[Mercutio]

Microsoft is discontinuing Technet Subscription sales at the end of August, 2013 and will no longer activate purchased subscriptions on October 1st of 2013. If you want Technet, get it now.

 

[ddrueding]

Yup. Just got the message myself. So for anyone that plans to run a server longer than the 180-day trial, are we buying retail copies?

 

[Mercutio]

The deeply sucktastic part for me is going to be rebuilding seldom-used demo/test environments for classrooms and labs every time I need them. Is there a generic tool somewhere to back up and restore Exchange/SQL Server/Sharepoint "personalities" in terms of content, config files and data locations so that it's portable between Windows installations? I don't know of anything like that.

 

[Howell]

What are they replacing it with?

 

[Mercutio]

Nothing. Maybe MSDN will still be available?

 

[ddrueding]

Nothing. Maybe MSDN will still be available?

I'll ask my dad if he got a similar letter for his MSDN subscription.

 

[Mercutio]

It really doesn't matter. The least expensive MSDN sub that includes the implementation products rather than just developer tools is ~$6,000.

 

[Handruin]

I haven't seen anything yet from my work MSDN account. I'll let you know if I get anything.

 

[mubs]

WHY???

They just removed the only incentive to stay with MS products. As many of you have been saying, this is the final nail in the coffin; MS is at the end of the road and time to say bye.

I hope they honor keys obtained with previous Technet subs.

 

[Howell]

Technically the keys are not legal once the sub expires. I suspect it will be either very easy or very hard to disable those keys. If they choose to disable I guess they would only disable update ability like they did with XP.

 

[Mercutio]

The license keys once issued don't go away. They never have before at least. But keys are issued individually now rather than all at once, so users no longer have a pool to draw from; they have to use all the activations from a single key before they can request another. After the service goes away, there won't be a way to request another key even if you were entitled to one. Since you can't tell from the Technet interface how many activations they're allowing on a per key basis, that is also a huge PITA.

 

[Chewy509]

Is it just me, or do recent actions of Microsoft as a whole seem really misguided and not customer focused?
Killing Technet, gonna suck a lot for a lot of smaller MS shops, be it development shops, resellers or just small support companies. Most small Mum'n'Dad PC shops I know run all their internal infrastructure on Technet licensed stuff...
Most developers seem to have MSDN accounts, which AFAIK is currently not affected, but for how long?
How many of these shops will seriously consider cloud offerings instead? How many will seriously consider moving to GNU/Linux or Mac internally? It seems Microsoft has lost touch with the very people who support and sell their software to the larger community...
Or is it just me?
PS. Quickly checking my Dreamspark accounts shows a reduction in available software and license counts... No more Office anything, all server products only get 1 license, and desktop is more limited as well... (Previously you got a license for every edition, be it Home, Home Prem, Prof, etc and a license for each arch, eg 1 for x86 and 1 for x64, so for Win7 you could get 10 licenses (counting each edition and each arch), now all I can get is 1 choice from all of them... so if I choose WIn7 Pro x64, I lose access to all other Win7 editions and arch's - All this could be just a fault thats occuring now with the licensing server, but who knows)?

 

[Chewy509]

edit away double post..

 

[Mercutio]

I don't think Action Pack subscriptions are going away either. They seem to use the same portal/interface as Technet, but I haven't gotten any messages that say anything is happening to them. Of course, Action Packs have an extremely limited collection of software. They really only support the most current version of Windows and Office and only grant one or two installs of server products and don't provide access to legacy products.

 

[Howell]

My thought was that it may have been difficult enough for MS to cull the pirate or otherwise illegitimate users of Technet from the legitimate users that it was not worth it. Once the last subscription runs out they can depreciate the service in a wholesale but controlled way. Non paying users may move to a non-MS OS or they may decide to pay. It will probably align with what apps are needed.

 

[ddrueding]

My Dad's response:

No, if anything MSDN is being expanded. It is probable that Visual Studio Professional will only be available as an MSDN subscription. I no longer have a personal subscription since the company supplies me with an Ultimate level one.

 

[mubs]

I still have one or two unused Technet keys for Win 7. I guess once the free W10 upgrade ends, these will be useful only for VMs. Yes?

 

[Mercutio]

Well, or new builds for folks who don't want 10. Personally I view Windows 7 keys as precious but I still have dozens of Windows 8 license keys that are just going to be wasted.

 

[mubs]

Thanks Merc. Worst case I may have to use one for a clean install of W10 on the laptop.

 

[Howell]

Thanks Merc. Worst case I may have to use one for a clean install of W10 on the laptop.

I would build a couple of vms and get them upgraded to 10 so you at least have the option.