What is the impact of Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 becoming End Of Life?
Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are obsolete and vendor support will be ending on January 14th 2020, meaning that the infrastructure will soon be end of life and unsupported. If you haven’t looked into your migration or upgrade options yet, your infrastructure and application security and performance could be affected.
As soon as the support lifecycle for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 has lapsed ongoing free security updates and non security patches will no longer be available, there will be no free vendor support options and online technical content updates will no longer be available.
Not patching your infrastructure will leave your operating system vulnerable to security issues and it won’t be long before those end of life systems are specifically targeted and exploited once vulnerabilities are identified, increasing your risks of getting hacked and your sensitive corporate data being compromised.
Microsoft strongly recommends that customers migrate away from the 2008 stack prior to the end of support deadline to ensure your infrastructure and applications remain supported and secure, however, in some instances where customers cannot meet the deadline, you may have the ability to purchase extended security updates for a limited time, however, this may not be available to everyone and some restrictions do apply.
Some products that are not available for extended security updates include Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 and R2, Windows HPC Server 2008 and R2, Windows Server update services 3.0 and SP1 and SP2, Windows Storage Server 2008 basic and 32-bit and embedded and embedded 32-bit, Windows Storage Server 2008 enterprise and embedded and R2, Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 essentials, Windows Storage Server 2008 standard and embedded and workgroup and workgroup embedded.
The following Windows Server 2008 products will become end of life as of the 14th of January 2020:
- Windows Server 2008 and R2 data centre, with and without Hyper-V
- Windows Server 2008 and R2 enterprise, with and without Hyper-V
- Windows Server 2008 and R2 for Itanium-based systems
- Windows Server 2008 Foundation
- Windows Server 2008 and R2 standard with and without Hyper-V.
Extended Support for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 end on July 9th, 2019.
The good news is since 2008 there have been a number of technology advancements in the cloud and Server space, there are significant benefits to be had by migrating to modern technologies including improved security, performance and importantly cost savings.
Some migration and upgrade options include retaining on premise Servers and Storage and upgrading to more recent software either newer Microsoft Based or Linux based operating systems, or we can assist you with a migration into the cloud on platforms including Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS or Google Cloud. We can walk through the various options with you, we will take the time to determine what other cloud infrastructure your organisation has available and we can make a recommendation based on the best interests of your organisation. In the event that your organisation has already adopted Azure, AWS or Google cloud it may make sense to standardise.
In the event that your organisation does not have a concrete strategy in place to upgrade your obsolete, end of life Servers and Storage and would like to understand what is involved to migrate to cloud infrastructure our team can help. We can work with you on Cloud Transformation projects, we can do audits on your VM’s and applications to determine if everything is virtualised and ready for migration. We can complete IT infrastructure audits to gauge the condition of your infrastructure, what hardware and software you are running and to propose a strategy for the ongoing upkeep of your assets.
CircleBC have assisted businesses all over Australia with their Technology needs, we can help you make a decision on what to do with your end of life Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2, we can support businesses in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide, Canberra, Perth, Tasmania, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia.