Countdown to July 14, 2015

In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft will end support for Windows Server 2003 on July 14, 2015. A quick glance at the calendar will confirm that this is now less than a year away. So this is your friendly reminder that if you are still running 2003 servers in production, and you haven’t yet begun planning how you’re going to replace them, you darn well better start soon. Here are a few questions to get you started:

  • Are those 2003 servers already virtualized, or do you still have physical servers that will need to be retired/replaced?
  • If you have physical 2003 servers, do you have a virtualized infrastructure that you can use for their replacements? (If not, this is a great opportunity to virtualize. If so, do you have enough available capacity on your virtualization hosts? How about storage capacity on your SAN?)
  • Can the application workloads on those 2003 servers be moved to 2008 or 2012 servers? If not, what are your options for upgrading those applications to something that will run on a later server version?
  • What impact will all this have on your 2015 budget? Have you already budgeted for this? If not, do you still have time to get this into your next budget?
  • Would it make more sense from a budget perspective to move those application workloads to the cloud instead of purchasing server upgrades? (Maybe a monthly operating expense will be easier to deal with than the capital expenditure of purchasing the upgrades.)

According to Microsoft, there are more than 9 million 2003 servers still in production worldwide…and the clock is ticking. How many of the 9 million are yours?

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