PRTG version numbers and release channels

Hi,

In this video, I'm going to cover PRTG version numbers, and what they mean, and the different software release channels Paessler offers.

PRTG software version numbers are four numbers, separated by dots, sometimes with a slash, and sometimes with a plus.  So, they look something like this.

The first number, in this case 16, indicates the year this version was released, so in 2016.

The second number, in this case 1, indicates the quarter in that year.  So, in this case, it was the first quarter of 2016.

The third number is Paessler's own internal version number, which is incremented for each version, and which is not reset each year.

The longer numbers on the end, in this case 2657 or 2658, or sometimes both, with a slash in between, are the build numbers.  If both build numbers are shown, the first one is the freeware and trial version, and the second one is the commercial version.

And, the version number sometimes includes a plus on the end, and sometimes not.  If the plus is showing, this means that PRTG is running as a 64-bit installation.  If there's no plus showing, then it's running as a 32-bit installation.  If you're expecting a 64-bit installation, but PRTG is running as a 32-bit installation, then please take a look at the amount of RAM in your server, because PRTG won't install as 64-bit unless it has at least 6 GIG of RAM.

I'd now like to show you the different software release channels that are available to you.

Paessler uses a continuous rollout model, so that you, our customers, can receive new features and bug fixes as soon as they're available, rather than having to wait for the next release cycle.  To ensure high quality releases, Paessler uses three release channels, called canary, preview and stable.

The Stable release channel is the one we recommend for productive environments.  It has passed all of our internal quality assurance testing.

The Preview channel is available so that you have access to new features or bug fixes before they've made it into the stable version.  The preview version has passed through our basic quality assurance testing, but the full testing suite is not yet complete.  We recommend the preview releases for your own test labs, but not for your productive servers. 

And the third channel, canary, includes the very newest releases, but it has only gone through minimal testing.  We produce a new canary version every night as part of our development teams nightly builds.  We recommend very strongly against using canary releases in production, but you're welcome to have a copy of our canary release for your test lab if you'd like to test new features immediately.