ESU Site is not able to seeing to add for Windows 2012/2012 R2 Servers

[Shekhar]

Hi There,

As Windows 2012 and 2012 R2 is going out of support on 10th October 2023. We have to use the extended support and for that we need ESU site to deploy on all our servers.

When searching for ESU Site to add, not able to see on license overview to add.

Anyone , can you please suggest, from where i can add that?

Thanks
Sharma

[ageorgiev]

You do need to enable it via the License Management site for the environments that you need it. Once that is done the root server need to gather the license change and run the Admin tool and only after that you will get the ESU sites to enable.

That said, 2012/2012R2 site is not available yet - I was told it will be released in the last 2 weeks of the month - I am trying to push it forward, so more time is made available for MAK key deployments but if others agree please chase it through your HCL contacts too - the more voices are made the better.

[Shekhar]

That means we have to wait for next 2 weeks and it will be automatically there in console?
Do we need and add-on subscription for that?

[ageorgiev]

It’s not going to be automatic. Like I said, you need to:

1. Add the Patch Add-on for the serial numbers you need
2. Wait for the license change to be gathered by respective environment
3. Run BESAdmin to propagate the license change
4. At that stage the Patch Add-on with all sites should become visible and you can enable the site in the console

The caveat here is that you need to wait the 2 weeks for this - as of right now, when you perform all those steps the only site that is visible is ESU 2008/2008R2 but those are the steps.

[ADL]

Hi Shekhar,

access to the Windows 2012 / 2012 R2 site requires entitlement to a separate add-on in BigFix, that can be installed on top of your existing licenses. Please remember that you also need to purchase from Microsoft the ESU licenses (or activate the ESU via one of the different options offered by Microsoft).
We are going to publish the new Windows 2012 ESU site in the next days, that initially will include the fixlets to install the Microsoft MAK key on the device, that is the preliminary step to allow the installation of the ESU content.
I’m expecting that the first drop of the actual patches from Microsoft will happen during the November Patch Tuesday (unless some critical vulnerabilities are discovered before).
Documentation at this link: https://help.hcltechsw.com/bigfix/10.0/patch/Patch/Patch_ESU/c_introduction.html will also be updated accordingly, once the new fixlets for Windws 2012 ESU will be available.

Thanks
Alessandro De Lorenzi
BigFix Product Manager

[standers67]

Hi,

This information just reached us from Microsoft, according to this information the activation will no longer be done using MAK keys, instead something called ARC is used. Or will MAK still be available in parallel with the new ARC solution?

Deliver Extended Security Updates for Windows Server 2012 - Azure Arc

[ageorgiev]

It reached us too but from what we were told Azure Arc was only released for servers in September is extremely “fresh”, so they will be allowing MAK key deployments like in the past for a while longer at least but do plan to “enforce” the use of Azure Arc from some time next year.

What is really bizarre that it doesn’t seem to be any indications that Azure Arc for MAK Keys management would be offered as free tool and if that is the case, MS are not only forcing a new tool with its own agent and whatnot to your machines BUT also plan to charge you for it too and you will be charged twice - once for ESU license and once for Azure Arc license… I really hope this is not the case as it sounds incredibly monopolistic/wrong but this is how things stand. One additional item would be - what happens to patch delivery IF they are to push their tool? It may happen that MS take off patches out of MS catalog (public delivery streams) and make them available to subscribed accounts which may complicate patching those through BigFix… All a bit of speculation but worrying signs for sure, let’s see how it plays out I guess…