Deprecations

Overview

Occasionally, Octopus will deprecate features that will no longer be supported. These features are eventually removed.

Deprecations have the following lifecycle:

• Announce deprecation
• (+6 months) Toggle off deprecated functionality
• (+1 year) Remove deprecated functionality

Planned Deprecations

Dropping capability for Windows Server 2008 Workers and Targets in 2025.1

Microsoft dropped extended support for the Windows Server 2008 family in January 2020. This operating system is also the last Windows OS that does not support .NET Core, one of the languages used to build Octopus Deploy. The complexity required to support this legacy platform outweighs the value to our customers.

It has been noted for several years that Octopus no longer actively tests against or supports Windows Server 2008. The planned change in 2025.1 will make this operating system requirement more definitive by introducing changes that may prevent standard deployment and runbook tasks from executing on this operating system.

To provide ample time to act, from Octopus Server 2024.1, workloads that run on Windows 2008 Servers will begin logging warnings. We urge you to upgrade your targets to a later version of Windows Server before 2025.1 to prepare for the removal of functionality.

Further notes about this pending change can be found in the 2024.1 deprecation blog post

Deprecations for 2024.3

Azure Resource Manager Powershell Module

The AzureRM Powershell modules were Microsoft’s way of integrating Powershell with Azure resources. Microsoft has deprecated AzureRM in favor of the Azure CLI or the Az Powershell modules.

AzureRM was deprecated by Microsoft as of February 29, 2024.

AzureRm will remain available until July 2024 (with an in-app warning). After this, you’ll need to move to either az cli or the az module for powershell for Azure authentication.

Deprecations for 2024.2

Bundled Tools

For some time, command line tools for AWS, Azure, and Terraform have been included with Octopus Deploy as a convenience mechanism. The provided versions of these tools are out of date and won’t be updated.

As of 2024.2, you won’t be able to configure deployment steps to use the bundled tools, but existing steps will continue to function. The bundled tools will be removed from Octopus Deploy in 2025.1.

If you’re currently using these bundled tools, you’ll need to either manually install the required versions on your workers or modify your deployment processes to make use of execution containers.

Deprecations for 2024.1

Helm V2

Helm V2 was deprecated in November 2020 and is no longer receiving updates.

As a result, coupled with very low usage, Helm V2 support will be switched off in 2024.3 and removed in 2025.1. When you use 2024.1, you’ll see deprecation warnings in both the UI and task logs if you use Helm V2.

An official Helm V2 to V3 migration guide details migration to Helm V3. After upgrading Helm, you should update deployment process steps in Octopus to use Helm V3 rather than Helm V2.

Azure Cloud Services (Classic)

Azure has announced the sunsetting of the original Cloud Services resource, renamed Cloud Services (Classic), with the final retirement date set as August 31, 2024. In a little over 6 months, teams still relying on this cloud service will be unable to deploy to them, with Octopus Deploy or otherwise.

In the lead-up, Octopus workloads using Azure Cloud Service Targets, Azure Cloud Service Steps, or Management Certificates in Octopus Deploy will start to see in-app and in-task warnings appear in Octopus Server 2024.1.

When Azure removes support for these resources, these warnings will become errors. We will then remove these resources from Octopus.

The recommended migration path outlined by Azure is to make use of the separate Azure Cloud Services (extended support) product. There are no plans to support this feature in Octopus.

Mono-based SSH Deployment Targets

From 2024.1 SSH deployments will no longer support running tasks via Mono. Instead, Linux workers and targets will only execute using .NET Core compiled tooling, which, in most cases, can be enabled via a simple change on the machine configuration page.

Further details on the background of this update and the reasoning behind it are available in the Deprecating Mono blog post.

Dropped support for Windows Server 2003 and un-patched Windows Server 2008 Workers and Targets

Windows Server 2003 Workers and Targets will no longer execute Octopus workloads from 2024.1. We highly recommend upgrading your targets to a later version of Windows Server before updating your Octopus Server instance to this release, as deployments and runbooks using these machines are unlikely to run.

Windows Server 2008 Workers and Targets that do not have the latest Service Packs installed will also no longer execute Octopus workloads from 2024.1 due to the dependency on .NET Framework 4.6.2, which is unavailable on these Operating Systems. We strongly recommend that you upgrade your targets to a later version of Windows Server before updating your Octopus Server instance to this release, as deployments and runbooks using these machines are unlikely to run.

Further details on the background for this update are available on the Dropping support for Windows Server 2003 machines blog post.

F# Script Steps

Due to the low uptake of F# script steps and the work required to upgrade them for continued use in our modern codebase, we will no longer support F# script steps from 2024.1. Customers who continue to need F# scripts in later Octopus versions should use standard shell scripting (powershell or bash) and invoke their scripts via their own F# tools included in additional referenced packages.

Deprecations for 2023.3

Project level /runbooks/all API endpoint

The GET /projects/{projectId}/runbooks/all API endpoint is being replaced by a new version that omits the ProjectIds query string parameter in future versions of Octopus. It was adopted from an earlier product version and is now redundant and potentially confusing. The same functionality is available via the GET /runbooks/all API endpoint, passing relevant Project IDs via the ProjectIds query parameter. If the ProjectIds parameter is not required, you can use the GET /projects/{projectId}/runbooks/all/v2 endpoint.

Reporting /reporting/deployments-counted-by-week API endpoint

The GET /reporting/deployments-counted-by-week API endpoint is being removed in future versions of Octopus. None of our supported clients currently use this endpoint.

While there is no direct replacement for this endpoint, much more detailed reporting is available via the Insights feature.

Project level /git/branches API endpoint

The POST method on the /projects/{projectId}/git/branches endpoint for version-controlled projects will be removed in a future version of Octopus. The same functionality is available using the /projects/{projectId}/git/branches/v2 endpoint.

To use the new endpoint, replace the CurrentBranchName field with BaseGitRef. The value of this field should be a fully-qualified git ref (e.g., refs/heads/main for the main branch, refs/tags/v1.2.3 for the v1.2.3 tag, or a commit hash).

Deprecations for 2023.1

Space level /useronboarding API endpoint

The Space level /useronboarding API endpoint will be removed in a future version of Octopus. We used this endpoint to improve the user onboarding experience but have reworked the new user experience and removed the old endpoint.

There is no replacement for this endpoint. We do not expect that anyone outside our internal teams has used this endpoint. If you believe this could negatively affect you, please contact our support team.

Unsupported Microsoft DFS configurations

We are updating the supported configurations of Microsoft DFS as shared storage for Octopus Server instances using a High Availability setup. We will continue to support DFS for disaster recovery scenarios, but only in the recommended configuration. You can find more details in our documentation.

Deprecations for 2022.4

Server extensibility

Server extensibility is deprecated and no longer maintained. It will no longer work at the end of 2023. Some of you may have implemented an extension for Octopus Server, however, we would be interested in understanding your requirements better to work towards resolving missing capabilities. Contact us via support team to let us know if this will affect your instance.

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Page updated on Friday, May 10, 2024