That's not enough. I had a client have a commercial CNC project screwed up because Windows decided it was done pausing, or didn't give them the obvious option.
Microsoft would argue that your CNC controller should be running Windows 10 LTSC or IoT. I have a Customer who conducts multi-day experiments sampling data from lab instruments connected to Windows 10-based PCs. Losing the results of an experiment wasn't acceptable, so they ponied-up for the more costly LTSC (at the time LTSB) version. Automatic reboots have been a non-issue.
That one has to do this is galling. The availability of a product SKU to work around the "evergreen" nature of Windows 10 doesn't eliminate my distaste for it.
Every time I hear about Windows 10 LTSC I look for a place to buy a key or download the ISO from Microsoft and I can’t find it. It seems like they don’t want to sell it.
It's only available through their volume license scheme. And therefore people will continue to use regular versions and suffer from these issues. Microsoft seems to have forgotten that small businesses (who don't want to deal with volume licenses) run Windows... They get Windows when they buy new computers.
I have small business customers w/ < 10 PCs who use Microsoft volume licensing. I almost always recommend Customers purchase volume license Windows Server to allow the software to be re-assigned to new hardware-- particularly when virtualization is in play.
It's not burdensome or expensive to deal with. (I'm not a reseller, so it affords no advantage for me-- kickbacks, etc. I just like knowing that expensive server software licenses can be moved to new hosts, etc.)
That’s because it’s a product that’s designed for developers to sell alongside the product it empowers. You shouldn’t need to buy a volume license unless you’re building, say, CNC machines. That a product developer sold you a product that needs to be automatically rebooted isn’t really Microsoft’s fault.
Indeed, although there's a huge amount of the economy built upon small businesses building things and selling them to other small businesses, neither of which wants to deal with a subscription-based volume license deal.
The factory I know using CNC machines bought them many moons ago, for a fixed payment (the old fashioned way), from a small business. They don't have any kind of subscription, they are fully offline, and they won't go anywhere near any kind of network. I don't really see recent Microsoft product lines delivering what's required in these scenarios.
Arguably this is more of a use-case for Windows Embedded, but that has its own licensing challenges. Ultimately the small system integrators will end up shipping with Ubuntu if Microsoft makes it too hard to build products around the
Windows ecosystem, as it will save them time, money, effort and support costs.
You'll have to work with a reseller. It's a bit of a pain, but it's not too bad. I've used Dell and CDW in the past.
The minimum volume license buy is 5 licenses. Any good reseller will sell you 1 copy of LTSC and 4 of the cheapest SKU in the catalog (usually $5-10 / ea) to get your volume license contract started. After that you can purchase piecemeal for 2 years before you need to fulfill the minimum purchase again. The licenses themselves are perpetual.
I don't like it, but it's not too hard to do either. The trick is finding a reseller who will leave you alone after the purchase (no sales calls, etc).
We were similarly almost bit in the @ass a few times during the lockdowns when no one was around to stop the Windows boxes from doing what they wanted, or were centrally commanded, to do.
I don't recall if we found a workaround, or were able to get someone in the office to do the reboots.
Before I was a software engineer, I did freelance consulting and a lot of Windows system administration.
Your statement about getting bit by Windows policies only spurs more questions on. What on earth is going on that you need someone physically present "to do the reboots", and why don't you have any remote administration tooling, and why are you using Windows client OS boxes, and...
Should I send you my card, or use my (still active, I think) partner status to sell you some server or LTSC licenses? Put you in touch with a managed service provider?
It seems to me no different than writing that you installed say, Ubuntu Desktop or MacOS in the office, set up your company's webapp or some critical software to start after user login, neglected to set up any remote administration software, and then when it reboots to install security updates it's the software's fault? There were a lot of ways things went wrong before the reboot.
Windows 7 is no longer supported and you now have devices not receiving security updates that are (if they're getting updates) connected to the internet.
