Final Thoughts on Rings

A Windows 10 rollout incorporates the concepts of rings so you can confidently roll out Windows 10 as new versions come out, month after month and year after year. Endpoint Policy Manager encourages you to use the same parallel concept of rings when rolling out the Endpoint Policy Manager CSE either for the first time or at update time. Use your software deployment mechanism (either an on-prem system, or MDM or Endpoint Policy Manager Cloud) to make the rings you need. Keep in mind that you typically want to update 2– 5% of your computers for a quick check, then increase the number to about 30%. Finally, after ensuring that everything is working properly, you can update the remainder.

If you fall behind, Endpoint Policy Manager has no mechanism to force updates. You can stay behind and out of date for the Endpoint Policy Manager CSE as long as you want (the practical outside length for this is about a year). However, we don't recommend this because lose out on new features and fixes in the latest CSE. With that being said, even if you fall out of date with the latest Endpoint Policy Manager CSE, you are still entitled to support. Just remember that you will have to reproduce the issue on a machine with the latest CSE and be prepared to get logs from a clean machine.