Retirement Planning (for service packs)

Yesterday I wrote about end-of-life planning for OSes and so it makes sense to talk about the end of a service pack, as retirement – it is after all the word that is used on the product lifecycle pages. Of course we don’t mean retirement in go and live by the seaside sense…

Special police squads -- BLADE RUNNER UNITS -- had orders to shoot to kill, upon detection,any trespassing Replicants.

This was not called execution. It was called retirement

… that sense. Service packs, like OSes (and replicants) get an end date set well in advance, having explained OSes I want to move on to service packs (and if you want to know about Replicants you’ll have to look elsewhere).

The rule for service packs is simple. Two years after the release of a Service Pack we stop supporting the previous version. So although Windows Vista will be in mainstream support until 2012, and extended support until 2017, that doesn’t mean you can run the initial release , or Service Pack 1 and be supported until then. Lets use Vista as a worked example – I explained yesterday

Windows Vista [had] a General Availability date [of] Jan 2007.For Vista, five years after GA will be later than 2 years after Windows 7, so Vista goes from mainstream to extended support in or shortly after January 2012. We’ve set the date, April 10th 2012. The end of extended support will depend on when the next version of Window ships, but it won’t be before April 11th 2017.

Service pack 1 for Vista became available in April 2008, and Service Pack 2 became available in April 2009.
So, the life of the original Release to Manufacturing of (RTM) version of Windows Vista ends on April 14 2010.
In the same way the life of SP1 of Vista should end in April 2011, actually because we don’t retire things on the exact anniversary, SP1 gets an extension until July 12 2011.

If you are on Vista you must have upgraded to SP1 or SP2 (or Windows 7) by April 14 if you want to continue being supported.

So here’s the summary for what is supported with Vista, and when

Jan ‘07 – April ‘08  Only RTM release available

April ‘08 – April ‘09 RTM and Service Pack 1 supported

April ‘09 – April ‘10 RTM , Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2 supported

April ‘10  - July ‘11 Service pack 1 and Service Pack 2 Supported

July ‘11 – April ‘12 Service Pack 2 only supported

April ‘12 – April ‘17 Extended support phase on SP2 only.

To simplify things, that assumes there is no Service pack 3 for Windows Vista, and that the successor to Windows 7 ships before April 11 2015.

Vista SP1 coincided with the release of Server 2008, and  Windows XP service pack 3 came very shortly afterwards. The extra few days means the anniversary for XP SP2 falls after the cut off date for April retirement and the end of life for XP SP 2 is July 13th 2010 (the same as day Windows 2000 professional and server editions). Mainstream support for Windows XP (all service packs) has ended,  after July 13 XP is extended support ONLY on SP3 ONLY.

I should have included in yesterdays post that July 13th 2010 also marks the end of mainstream support for Server 2003 (and Server 2003 R2), the  RTM and SP1 versions are already retired. It would be very unusual to see a new service pack for something in extended support. If you still have 2003 servers, you need to decide what you will do about support / upgrades before Jul 13th

Server 2008 shipped as SP1 to sync up with Windows Vista  and SP2 for both came out on the same date, so there are no server service pack actions required until July 12 2011. I explained yesterday why I have sympathy with people who don’t plan, but if you are on Server 2008 SP1 don’t leave it till the last minute to choose between SP2 or upgrading to R2  and then implementing your choice.

Update - Fixed a few typos.