Resolving the App-V 4 - SQL Server 2008 R2 Supportability Conundrum

Over the past 6 months, I’ve had quite few customers coming to me with concerns regarding what they see as a potential supportability gap for legacy App-V 4 infrastructures. Their main concern lies with the fact that App-V 4.6 SP3 remains in support through July 2020 while SQL Server 2008 R2 (the latest version it supports) will go out of support in July of 2019, leaving a supportability gap of a year. “What is being done to address this?” “Will there be a patch similar to when Visual C++ 2005 went end of life for App-V 5?”

The short answer is no. This is primarily because there is no supportability gap with SQL Server. App-V 4.6 SP3 still uses the App-V 4.5 Management system. There was never a 4.6 server release. Officially, 4.6 was exclusively a client release. While the App-V 4.6 client remains in support until 2020, the App-V server support ends in January of 2019 – before SQL Server 2008 SP3 goes out of support. The release of App-V 4.6 did not extend the 5+5 lifecycle of the server-side products.

Here are the respective lifecycle dates for the products involved:

• App-V 4.5 SP2 (Client and Server) – Ends 1/2019 - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search?alpha=application%20virtualization%204.6%20Service%20Pack%203
• SQL Server 2008 R2 SP3 – Ends 7/2019 - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search?alpha=SQL%20Server%202008%20R2%20service%20pack%203
• App-V 4.6 SP3 Client – Ends 7/14/2020 - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search?alpha=application%20virtualization%204.6%20Service%20Pack%203

This also means that those enterprises still using the App-V 4 management system have 18 months less to move over to either App-V 5 or leverage the App-V 4 client in either a stand-alone fashion or SCCM-integration for its last 18 months in support.