Windows Server 2003 is going away!
For those of you who just survived the Windows XP end of life event and miss all of the fun…. Don’t worry there is more “fun” around the corner. July 14th 2015 Microsoft will retire and stop support on its server 2003 platform. Those of you who are using Server 2003 should start planning now for your server upgrade or retirements. When Server 2003 expires, no further security patches or vulnerability fixes will occur. We know that sophisticated criminals are waiting for the expiration event to reap havoc with your data. After July 14th of next year F1’s ability to manage the integrity of these servers will be greatly hampered because of the use of non-supported software. We have a list of all server 2003 clients and will be contacting you shortly.
Q. Why does Microsoft keep doing this?
A. Most software providers do this. It is called life cycle management and is crucial in keeping up with the latest coding and technologies available to better run and secure your data. It has, after all, been out for almost a decade. Which in tech years is a long time.
Q. What will happens if I don’t upgrade?
A. The sky could very well fall. XP vulnerabilities after their retirement were bad enough but limited to workstations in most cases. THIS IS YOUR SERVER. This is not the keys to your kingdom, it is the Kingdom in some cases. If you fall under any compliance category like HIPAA, Government Contractor, Financial institution, Utility or PCI then July 15th of next year you will be out of compliance overnight.
Q. Do I have to upgrade the equipment as well as operating system?
A. It depends. In many cases we would expect that a secondary server that is running Server 2003 can be gracefully retired and data pulled off to archive. If 2003 is on your primary server and it is less than 3-4 years old probably not. If the equipment is 4 years old or greater it might need to be upgraded or replaced. We can do a review of you equipment and find out if it is good enough to run a more updated operating system or if we can retire that older system all together.
Q. Can’t I just wait until next June to worry about this?
A. No! We have over 50 servers on this soon to be retire operating system and we want to start conversations with you now to create a plan that will have the least amount of impact on your budget and productivity. Please do not wait until the last minute. If this is anything like the XP replacement scheduling, April, May and June of next year are going to get booked up very quickly.
Please contact [email protected] to get this conversation started
