Windows-2016 environment removal postponed until April 1st, 2022

[alepauly]

Breaking changes

Windows 2016 hosted runners were scheduled for full removal on March 15th, 2022. However, we are still seeing significant usage from customers and we want to give them more time to migrate to the new runners. In order to give customers another chance to move to either windows-2019 or windows-2022 we will delay the removal of windows-2016 until April 1st, 2022.

To raise awareness of the removal, we will have rolling 12-hour periods where the image will be unavailable for customers. During these "brownout" periods, customers will see an error message indicating that the image is slated for removal on April 1st, 2022. The schedule for those brownout periods is as follows for both Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions:

1. Tuesday March 15, 20:00 UTC to March 16, 08:00 UTC
2. Thursday March 17, 08:00 UTC to March 17, 20:00 UTC
3. Friday March 18, 20:00 UTC to March 19, 08:00 UTC
4. Monday March 21, 08:00 UTC to March 21, 20:00 UTC
5. Tuesday March 22, 20:00 UTC to March 23, 08:00 UTC
6. Wednesday March 23, 20:00 UTC to March 24, 08:00 UTC
7. Friday March 25, 08:00 UTC to March 25, 20:00 UTC
8. Sunday March 27, 20:00 UTC to March 28, 08:00 UTC
9. Tuesday March 29 Wednesday March 30, 08:00 UTC to March 30, 20:00 UTC
10. Full removal - April 1, 15:00 UTC

See the original announcement at #4312

Target date

April 1st, 2022

The motivation for the changes

Windows Server 2016 Active support ends on 11 Jan 2022 and Windows Server 2022 VM image is going out of beta later this year.
As part of our ongoing efforts to keep GitHub and Azure Devops hosted runners updated and secure, the Windows 2016 virtual environment will be removed from GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps.

Possible impact

Workflows targeting the Windows 2016 image will fail.

Virtual environments affected

• Ubuntu 18.04
• Ubuntu 20.04
• macOS 10.15
• macOS 11
• Windows Server 2016
• Windows Server 2019
• Windows Server 2022

Mitigation ways

Change your workflows to use windows-latest, windows-2022, or windows-2019

[rdhaundiyal]

Hi, I am not using windows-2022 but still getting the error related to 2016
is it some side effect

##[Error 1]
This is a scheduled windows-2016 brownout. The windows-2016 environment is deprecated and will be removed on April 1st, 2022. For more details, see #5238

##[Error 2]
The remote provider was unable to process the request.

Deployment canceled by Microsoft.VisualStudio.Services.ReleaseManagement on 3/16/2022, 6:15 PM

[GokulKannanN]

We are using vmImageName: 'ubuntu-latest' but still we are getting this error.
what is the solution for this issue.

[rdhaundiyal]

update, it was the release agent which was by default picking up 2016-17 even after creating a new release from scratch, settign it manually to 2022 worked

[GokulKannanN]

worked

I did not understand. Can you please tell me where I have to update 2022.
because Ubuntu does not have 2022, its latest version is 20.04

[rdhaundiyal]

my issue was related to release , in the release pipeline -> edit, you have agent, clicking on the agent show you the provider
https://blog.novacare.no/devops-change-agent-specification-to-windows-latest/

[ManaliMnS]

worked

I did not understand. Can you please tell me where I have to update 2022. because Ubuntu does not have 2022, its latest version is 20.04

Go to your release pipeline. Edit . Go to agent job. Change agent specification to windows latest

[CodeIn24]

Hi, Just for better understanding, we have self-hosted agent on one of our machines having windows 2016 OS , so this means we have to upgrade the OS and re-host the agent for pipelines to keep running, am I missing anything?

This option will not work for us considering our setup:

[alepauly]

Hi, Just for better understanding, we have self-hosted agent on one of our machines having windows 2016 OS , so this means we have to upgrade the OS and re-host the agent for pipelines to keep running, am I missing anything?

@CodeIn24 - this doesn't affect self-hosted agents. it's only related to the hosted Windows 2016 virtual environment. You don't need to change anything.

[CodeIn24]

@alepauly good to know this, thanks