In this blog post, we showcase the solution for the error - This is a scheduled windows-2016 brownout. The windows-2016 environment is deprecated and will be removed on April 1st, 2022.

Recently, when I was trying to configure a new Azure Release Pipeline, I noticed the following error:

This is a scheduled windows-2016 brownout. The windows-2016 environment is deprecated and will be removed on April 1st, 2022. For more details, see https://github.com/actions/virtual-environments/issues/5238

Thankfully our YAML files for the build pipelines use ubuntu-latest and so they were not failing. If your build pipelines use 'windows-2016' please change the vmImage setting to 'windows-2022'.

The issue for us was in the Azure Release Pipeline. In order to resolve that, follow the steps below.

1. Edit the Release Pipeline and click on the Tasks menu item.

2. Click on Run on agent, select the right Agent Specification. I chose 'windows-latest' but 'windows-2022' will also work.

3. Save the pipeline and create a new release to test.

You will see this warning if you use 'windows-latest'. You can ignore it.

If you have any questions, please get in touch with me. @akshaysura13 on Twitter or on Slack.