Take a long hard look…
Depending on when you are reading this Windows 2003 is either still in your environment or it’s already gone.
However you look at it, this has been the reliable & trusted workhorse of the Data Centre (Comms room or Broom cupboard aka ‘it’s under Matts desk!”) for the last many years and incidentally mostly in x32. From Exchange to SharePoint to SCOM/SCCM and a whole plethora of business apps and services Windows 2003 Server has been the main man for such a long time we take it for granted.
It is now time to say goodbye 😐 , mainstream support ends July 14th. 2015. That’s LESS than a year. No more patches, updates. Nothing. Only those who are desperate or really stupid will keep any live services running on them beyond 2015 The security risk is just too great.
‘What to do?’ I hear you cry, well consider this:
- Migrate upwards and onwards to 2008R2, 2012 or even 2012R2, does your app/service vendor support this, your hardware/virtual platform?
- Migrate to a service based model where your solution is now cloud based, again is there a viable solution for your app/service?
- Migrate to a whole new app/service with all the pain that comes along with that, but at least you can hop straight to 2012/2012 R2 (hopefully)
There is a LOT of work to do, and currently I do not see many organisations doing that work. Perhaps after budgets are being signed off in the 2nd Quarter 2015 the panic might start.
The Great Server 2003 rundown brings an end to an era, it really was the NetWare killer (although the ball got rolling with AD in 2000 Server) providing the knockout blow. It came with a fully blown Mail service (free!), a free Web Server (IIS 6), the awesome GPMC and even WSS to host SharePoint sites (free!). It was resilient. It was brilliant. Its time has come.
Close the door on the way out please.