Servicing improvements

The numbers shown in Figure 4 are based on analysis done by Microsoft for all Windows patches that were released in 2014. These numbers fall under three categories as the following:

• Important bulletins
• Critical bulletins
• Reboots required

If you had Nano Server installation options available in 2014, Nano Server had nine important bulletins versus Server Core which had 23 and Server with Desktop Experience that had 26. The interesting one is critical bulletins; Nano Server had two versus Server Core that had eight and Server with Desktop Experience 23. The critical bulletin is a security fix for something that Microsoft has found that people are trying to exploit. This is rated as critical and must be deployed as quickly as possible. So, for the entire year, Nano Server had only two of those critical updates. However, the important bulletins help in overall quality of the system. For Nano Server, there were three reboots required for the entire year, Microsoft is working hard to bring the reboot number from three to only two; Server Core had six and Server with Desktop Experience had 11. Thus for 11 months, you had to reboot your servers because of patches that were applicable to them, whereas for Nano Server, you had to reboot only thrice. Here you can see the uptime benefits of deploying Nano Server: