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Microsoft Offers Resources for Orgs Stuck on Windows Server 2008

For organizations that still haven't transitioned away from Windows Server 2008, which lost support on Jan. 14, Microsoft is extending some help.

The company has published some support resources at this end-of-support page. It includes a link to a November Microsoft Ignite session on Windows Server 2008's end of support by Ned Pyle, a principal program manager on the Windows Server team. Pyle's talk is a rapid tour that focuses on the basic steps. He described conducting an inventory, doing the planning and making the choice to either migrate, upgrade or move servers. Various Microsoft tools get demonstrated along the way.

The Ignite talk also described the option to use Extended Security Updates or switch to hosted Windows Server using Azure virtual machines. However, Pyle noted that using Windows Server on-premises is still OK since "88 percent of all Windows Servers run on-premises." He also opened his talk by noting that "most servers in the world" are still running Windows Server 2008.

Pyle said that Microsoft's servers follow an "n-2" two-generation upgrade formula. In the case of Windows Server 2008, this n-2 policy means it's possible to upgrade to Windows Server 2012, but no further. To get to the current flagship Windows Server 2019 product, an additional upgrade step would be needed.

In addition to the Ignite talk, Pyle offered advice on how to handle Windows Server 2008's end of support in a series of short videos. The videos can be found in posts by Rick Claus, a cloud operations advocate with the Microsoft Azure engineering team, covering the following topics:

In addition, Microsoft highlighted the option to move Windows Server 2008 workloads to Azure, as described in a post by Vijay Kumar, director of Windows Server and Azure product marketing. Additional support links can be found in this post by the Windows Server team.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

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