

Microsoft provides legal Vagrant box for Windows Server 2012 R2 Data Center - peterb
http://vagrantbox.msopentech.com/

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ScottWhigham
I don't really understand the how and why of this, I guess. I have two
"issues" with it:

1) That's a large, 8.3GB download - how are they making money if "anyone,
anywhere, even if they aren't logged in" can download it? I could imagine
their bandwidth bills would be big from regular users downloading the image
but their bandwidth will be MASSIVE with bots/etc downloading.

2) _90 days, until June 28th_

It's a VM that is hard coded to die within the next 90 days. Is the plan to
then have them rebuild/re-host a new version on June 29? Then I'll download
it, and use it for 90 days? What value is this for people who reach this page
on June 14, for example?

This has to be MSFT licensing driven. "We don't _really_ want to support this
sort of thing but we do want people to think we do. What we'll do is release
time-bombed versions and then hope folks will hate it so much that they decide
to spin up an instance on Azure."

I just don't understand how this fits into Microsoft's "Let's move everyone
who wants to 'test' our software to the cloud" movement that they've been on
about for the past year or so (with the cancelling of Technet, etc).

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mleonhard
Setting up automated testing for a Windows application is an excruciating
manual process of installing the OS in a VM and periodically manually
installing updates, multiplied by 15+ OS flavors. It's a big waste of time
that Microsoft could solve by simply releasing images periodically. I hope
this release is the first step in that direction.

