Ouch! Your server operating system support has ended and you’ve got servers running that OS. What should you do?
As analysts, we get this question quite often. Considering the fact that Windows Server 2008 supported ended on January 14th of this year, it is a good time to know the options. My analyst colleagues, Tony Harvey and Mike Cisek have put together a great publication that helps you put together an effective and appropriate action plan.
The document is entitled, “How to Respond to Windows Server 2008 End of Support.” Like the title, the document is straightforward in its advice. It starts with an important reason to address the issue in the form of what Gartner calls a Strategic Planning Assumption. That strategic assumption is, “By 2022, 50% of organizations that do not have a migration plan in place for Windows Server 2008 will be forced to migrate due to a security incident or compliance issue.”
Bearing that in mind, what can one do? Frame your choices as four options which are noted in the graphic below.
From there, Gartner has created a helpful decision tree and advice on risk assessment that can help you take the right direction which can be found in the document as well.
The important point here is not to ignore an end-of-support event. Doing so can create issues that can come back to haunt you later. At Gartner, we’re happy to help address these issues to keep your infrastructure and operations organization on a positive track.
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