Wish: push updates to stable (vs beta)

[Shanec]

I wish they would start pushing updates to stable and not trying to heard everyone onto beta, over a year now since switching firmware and a year in December since mx firmware.. meanwhile the beta has had what 10-15 releases? surely one of those is stable enough that it can go live 

[PhilipDAth]

With regard to switching; I think having a new stable version annually would be good.  I have clients that rebooting their switches more frequently than this would cause issues.

I think I would be happier with more aggressive updates to the "stable" non-beta firmware for MX appliances.  Perhaps every 6 months or so would be good.

[MRCUR]

@PhilipDAth Agreed on the MS firmware, although I appreciate that beta firmware releases come pretty often for that line which is nice if you have the opportunity to reboot more often. 

I believe Meraki used to target quarterly stable releases, which obviously isn't really happening anymore. Most people I know using Meraki are on beta firmware now because of this, so it's turned into a sort of "Gmail" type beta (forever a beta). 

[PhilipDAth]

I found this interesting article:

https://documentation.meraki.com/zGeneral_Administration/Firmware_Upgrades/Meraki_Firmware_Release_P...

The bit of interest is:

"A stable release candidate matures into a stable version over time as it is slowly rolled out to devices globally. After 20%+ of devices are running the stable release candidate, a final formal review is conducted on the firmware. Again the same KPIs are analyzed as used in the stable release candidate review. Upon completion of these processes the firmware can be promoted to "Stable". After promotion, stable versions can be applied by any customer via the firmware upgrade tool on dashboard. The latest stable version is also the version that is used for all newly created dashboard networks for a particular device. "

So in short, 20% of the devices have to upgrade to the stable release candidate before it can be considered for getting the label of "stable".