Pre-warning: Windows Server 2003 SP1 Out of Support in April

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During Conficker we realized that a lot of customers are on unsupported OSs. I would like to draw your attention to a few things:

  • There is a webpage called Microsoft Support Lifecycle where you find all the information on the lifecycle of our products. Let me just quote two things:
    • Through the policy, Microsoft will offer a minimum of 10 years of support (5 years Mainstream Support and 5 years Extended Support) at the supported service pack level for Business and Developer products.
    • When a new service pack is released, Microsoft will provide either 12 or 24 months of support for the previous service pack (Remark: It is 24 months for Windows)
  • You can subscribe to a quarterly newsletter with regards to this issue: Subscribe to Microsoft Support Lifecycle Quarterly Update Newsletter
  • There is a side, where you can search for products including the products that leave Extended Support e.g. in the next 6 months https://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/
  • There is one page dedicated to Service Packs: https://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifesupsps
    • If you look at that, you will see that Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 will be retired on 14. April 2009. This means that this is the last time you will get Security Updates for SP1! If you did not already, please start to roll-out SP2 immediately.

Hope this helps

Roger