Changes to the XenApp Product Lifecycle
Back in May, in our post entitled “When Is End of Life Not End of Life,” we talked about the impending “End of Life” dates for all versions of XenApp earlier than v6.5 on Server 2008 R2. Citrix has now backed off on those dates, and given us a bit more breathing room.
Note that nothing has changed for XenApp on Server 2003. If you’re still running Presentation Server v4.5 or XenApp v5.0 on Server 2003, you should be planning to upgrade as soon as possible, because we’ve already moved past the “End of Maintenance” date (which was September 30). That means that no code maintenance is being done other than for serious security vulnerabilities. “End of Life” hits next March 31, at which time there will be no support available at all from Citrix unless you want to buy “Extended Support” – and, trust me, you really don’t want to buy Extended Support.
Extended support is a cool $100,000 for six months, regardless of how many licenses you have, and that’s in addition to a Premier Support agreement, which you must also have on your XenApp licenses (at a cost of $35/year/license) before you can buy Extended Support. It is deliberately priced at such a painful level to discourage you from buying it. Citrix really, really doesn’t want to support products that are beyond their End of Life dates.
- Customer must have a current/valid/paid Citrix Technical Support contract (that means either Premier Support, or one of the legacy incident-based support agreements.
- Customer must have a Citrix Technical Relationship Manager (TRM) contract, which is an additional $40,000/year.
- Customer mus purchase Extended Support in minimum increments of 6 months at $100,000 per 6 month increment.
- Should the customer require a hotfix, the cost will be $40,000 per hotfix.
So, when it comes to keeping XenApp in service beyond the End of Life date, “Just say no.”
The good news is that End of Maintenance for XenApp v5.0 on Server 2008 has now been extended to July 13, 2014, and End of Life to January 13, 2015. (Why the dates fall in the middle of the month seems puzzling, but there it is.) That’s good for customers who still need to support apps that just won’t run on a 64-bit platform – you’ve got a little more time to plan your transition.
The same dates apply to XenApp v6.0 on Server 2008 R2…but if you’re running Server 2008 R2, there’s really no reason why you shouldn’t be on XenApp v6.5, and we’d recommend that you go there as soon as possible.
If you want to see the full announcement with all the dates, you can find it in the Citrix Knowledge base – it’s article CTX122442.
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