Windows server 2012 end of life

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Microsoft 10 октября 2023 года прекращает поддержку Windows Server 2012 и 2012 R2. Обе операционные системы перестанут получать обновления безопасности, исправления ошибок и техническую поддержку.

Версию Server 2012 Microsoft запустила 4 сентября 2012 года. В том же году на рынок вышла Windows 8, которая к 2016 уже лишилась технической поддержки. На смену ей пришла Windows 10, и в итоге версия Server 2012 просуществовала дольше, чем базовая ОС.

Официально компания отказалась от развития Server 2012 ещё в октябре 2018 года, но пообещала выпускать обновления безопасности до 2023 года. Этот период подходит к концу 10 октября. После этого Microsoft завершает развитие и поддержку ОС. 

Пользователи, которым важно ещё какое-то время пользоваться Server 2012, смогут оформить платную поддержку до 2026 года. Компания не сообщает цену услуги. Корпоративные пользователи могут узнать её у менеджеров Microsoft. Кроме того, есть возможность обновиться до Windows Server 2022.

Теги:

• microsoft
• windows
• windows server
• windows server 2012
• windows server 2012 r2
• операционные системы
• серверное администрирование

Хабы:

• Серверное администрирование
• Разработка под Windows

In October 2023, Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 will reach the end of extended support – leaving your infrastructure and applications at risk. (SQL Server 2012 extended support has already expired as of July 2022.)

Free Download: The Ultimate Guide to Windows Server on Azure

To avoid potential security breaches and falling out of compliance with industry regulations, this is the ideal time to start planning how to mitigate the risks by migrating your workloads to newer and supported versions – or consider alternative options to allow you more time to properly address the supportability concerns.

In this blog we will cover the business implications of Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 reaching end-of-life, the benefits and considerations of migrating or upgrading, and your options for determining your best path forward to achieve your business goals.

Quick Links:

• Business Implications
• End-of-Life Options
• Datacenter Benefits and Considerations
• Cloud Benefits and Considerations
• What’s the Best Path for You?
• Custom Assessment
• FAQs
• Windows Server Lifecycle Dates
• SQL Server Lifecycle Dates
• Free eBook: The Ultimate Guide to Windows Server on Azure

Business Implications

When we meet with organizations facing end-of-life support scenarios, many implications arise. If they are out of support, then how will they meet their compliance requirements? How will they ensure they have reliable support to ensure uptime and mitigate risk exposure? What do they do if they’re compromised? All implications are worth considering, and we break them down below.

1. Compliance

If your organization maintains compliance with PCI, HIPAA, or any other compliance agencies, then all application and infrastructure workloads must maintain a vendor supported state. For operating systems such as when Window Server support ends, you automatically become noncompliant if you have unsupported workloads in your environment or are running applications that are no longer in scope for compliance regulations. If you’re running end-of-life workloads, your insurance premiums increase – along with your exposure to a security attack.

2. Loss of Supportability / Delays in Case of Event

When support ends for Windows Server 2012 in October 2023, organizations will lose supportability in the event of an issue or security threat. Without a reliable vendor to provide support, organizations will be vulnerable to disruption (or worse). If that happens, you won’t be able to call someone to get immediate help. Instead, you would have to get a quote and then pay an invoice before you can get help. There’s a significant delay in the case of an event.

3. Targeted Attacks and Increased Risk of Exposure

Bad actors are waiting with their fingers on the trigger for software to go out of life. If you wait until the last minute to migrate or upgrade your end-of-life software, then you may not have a secure solution in place by the time support ends. Not protecting your organization can lead to loss of revenue, loss of reputation, and targeted attack exposure risk.

Loss of Revenue

If your systems aren’t operating correctly and you’re in a time-sensitive industry, then any downtime caused by either loss of features, loss of support, or an attack could lead to revenue loss.

Loss of Reputation

Your reputation is also impacted because many security attacks hit the news. Clients become wary of organizations who aren’t savvy enough to protect themselves or their clients’ data from exposure.

4. Inability to Take Advantage of Newer Features and Functionality

Every new version of Windows introduces newer capabilities that improve the functionality and user experience. Therefore, being able to remain current allows you to take advantage of such improvements faster and sooner – improving your level of service to your organization.

Windows Server 2012 / R2 End-of-Life Options

Now that you know why you should migrate or upgrade before your software support ends, it’s time to consider your options. You have to evaluate both the short-term and long-term implications to deal with aging operating systems. In the long run, the goal is to implement a lifecycle management strategy to address aging Operating System Environment (OSE)[1] instances. To help you understand what you need to consider, we created a checklist of options for you that we explain in detail below.

	In the Datacenter		Move to the Cloud
	In-Place Upgrade of OSE Version		VM Migration to Azure
	Migrate Workload to Newer OSE		VM Migration to VMware on Azure
	VM Platform Migration to Azure Stack HCI		VM Migration to Nutanix on Azure
	Pay for Extended Security Updates		If Database, Migration to Azure PaaS
	Isolate Workload		Application Refactor

Datacenter Options: Benefits and Considerations

In-Place Upgrade OSE Version

If you’re looking to optimize your datacenter, you know that your datacenter is not going away. You still have on-premises infrastructure that you’re supporting. So how do you account for Server 2012 going out of life in your environment? You could do an in-place upgrade. We don’t recommend it because it tends to introduce more risk than is often necessary, but there may be times where this may make sense – especially with lighter workloads. Just ensure you have backups and VM snapshots ready.

Migrate Workload to Newer OSE

Usually, the preferred option is to migrate the workload to a newer operating system. That’s a parallel side-by-side move of the application, whether it’s a reinstall or you’re just migrating data between them. It’s a viable and proven approach. Unfortunately, this process tends to be lengthy, especially with multi-tiered applications with complex SLAs, downtime restrictions, and inter-dependencies with other systems (both known and unknown). Due to the length of time needed to complete numerous upgrades, you may need to seek alternate methods to migrate your workloads to a supportable configuration.

VM Platform Migration to Azure Stack HCI

For on-premises infrastructure, the current alternative to paying for extended security updates is to migrate virtual workloads to an Azure Arc–enabled Azure Stack HCI environment. Azure Stack helps you consolidate virtualized workloads and gain cloud efficiencies when data needs to remain on-premises for varying reasons, while also providing a modern cloud-managed virtualization environment for your datacenters and remote offices.

Azure Stack HCI was built for your datacenter and lets you enable many features and capabilities previously limited to the Azure cloud platform like Azure Kubernetes Services and SQL PaaS. It also enables Azure hybrid services that enhance your datacenter with capabilities such as cloud-based monitoring, Site Recovery, and VM backups – as well providing as a central view of all of your Azure Stack HCI deployments and workloads in the Azure portal. More and more features are becoming available such as running Azure Virtual Desktop workloads on your infrastructure.

If you’re a VM owner with many VMs, determine at what level you are looking at the problem. If you have too many individual workloads that you need to upgrade, then you may want to buy time. If you’re on-premises, there are two ways to buy time: you can implement Azure Stack HCI (which is Microsoft’s alternative to paying them more money on external security updates), or you can pay for extended security updates.

Pay for Extended Security Updates

It’s very costly to purchase extended support, with an average cost of 75% of the Windows Server license, and it’s an additional yearly expense you have to incur for each workload. But once extended support ends, you won’t get any support from Microsoft. You will have to move on to something else or risk potential security breaches.

Note: For compliance with end-of-life workloads, you can get Windows Server 2008/R2, SQL Server 2008/R2, Windows Server 2012/R2, and SQL Server 2012 extended security updates at no extra cost when migrating them to Azure Stack HCI. This does require some planning as Azure Stack HCI is a hypervisor replacement to any existing virtualization solutions and relies on software-defined storage solutions and replication. This translates to requiring local storage on each Azure Stack node for storage, and it also means that any SAN solutions have to be either presented directly to the workloads above the virtualization layer or front-ended with a Windows Server Scale-Out-File-Server cluster for use by the Azure Stack HCI cluster nodes (source). The ideal Azure Stack HCI configuration would be excluding shared storage appliances altogether from the virtualization stack and from your datacenter (source).

Isolate Workload

If your applications simply won’t run on newer versions of the operating system, or you are unable to migrate to a supported virtualization platform to take advantage of extended security updates, then your remaining option is to isolate and sandbox the workload as much as possible. This is the “walled garden” approach where you prevent access to and from the internet – as well as isolate connections to and from the workload with firewalls and other security measures. This is not ideal, but sometimes you have a box that can’t go down and has been running Windows NT forever.

Cloud Options: Benefits and Considerations

Microsoft has been encouraging moving your workload VMs to Azure for a while, allowing you take advantage of automatic 3-year extended security updates for end-of-life SQL and Windows Server environments. Now, Microsoft is enabling and supporting moving your VMware and Nutanix workloads to Azure directly, while allowing you to also take advantage of the same ESUs available to native Azure workloads (assuming you’re ready to move your workloads into the cloud).

VM Migration to Azure

The most common type of migration is that of leveraging tools such as Azure Migrate to replicate and move your workloads either as native VMs in Azure or to SQL Managed Instances. If you have IIS applications, there are even options to migrate the application directly to container instances. This option carries with it the need for proper governance and planning to ensure that the environment is securely managed and maintained. Additionally, for many organizations this may involve a change in mindset from capacity management to more of a consumption mindset – as well as a change from CapEx to OpEx (in most cases).  

VM Migration to Azure VMware Service or to Nutanix Cloud Clusters

You can take advantage of the partnerships that Microsoft has established with VMware and Nutanix, allowing first-level support and technology offerings within the Azure environment. By standing up VMware or Nutanix environments in Azure, you can move your VM workloads as-is to the cloud – while leveraging the same tooling and skillsets you have already invested in. An additional benefit to this approach is allowing you to take advantage of Azure cloud services alongside your current solution stack – empowering your IT teams with more options to provide a better level of service to the organization.

Support for these options are handled through Microsoft Support as they are considered first tier solutions. Once built out, these solutions run directly on hardware running in Azure datacenters, allowing you to take advantage of the same capacity management strategies you are accustomed to.

If Database, Migration to Azure PaaS

If you have any databases, consider a migration to Azure PaaS and available SQL managed instances instead of to a VM running in Azure. You can also take advantage of the many open-source options available in the Azure marketplace.

Application Refactor

If it’s an application, consider an application refactor. Whether you’re migrating a workload to a new OS or a PaaS/SaaS offering, there may be other options and third-party tools available to make your transition smoother.

What’s the Best Path for You?

To help answer this question, first determine how to align your IT strategy with the time you have to ensure that your infrastructure remains compliant. It’s often a balancing act as you determine what is best for your organization. The best path is simply the best one customized to your situation and goals.

Identify Your Needs and Constraints

Taking on any upgrade or migration requires the right balance of time and people with the skills to achieve such an undertaking. You are often dealing with not just a single system, but clusters of interconnected systems that must be considered.

You could also be facing budgetary constraints where the goal is more about figuring out how to stay compliant while buying time to do the migration work (or a combination of both) as you prioritize key systems and find alternate methods for secondary systems.

In either case, the goal is to keep the efforts from ballooning out of control. Ensuring that you are able to plan out the cost, complexity, and timeline for how to achieve a state of compliance requires careful planning.

Create a Strategic Plan

To accomplish this, we recommend taking the time to create a strategic plan for handling the problem for the short-term and long-term. That gets rid of the unknowns. With a plan, you can see where you need to migrate, upgrade, and optimize – and how each affects everything else in your environment.

Address how to handle on-premises workloads, as well as cloud-based workloads. Ideally you are able to consider not just the cost of getting compliant, but also include the benefits of new capabilities, features, and solutions that you gain from leveraging a more modern approach. These solutions include leveraging cloud management for your on-premises environments, switching to a SAN-less model for storage, and even enabling the use and management of containers in your datacenter.

Take the necessary time up-front to determine if a workload should be rearchitected instead of migrated or upgraded. Doing so may save you from additional management costs by taking advantage of PaaS and SaaS solutions – all with the goal of reducing your overall technical debt.

Assess What You Have and Where You Need to Focus

If you are unsure of what blind spots you may have in your environment, we recommend engaging a third-party (like Core BTS) to perform an assessment that scans your environment and helps you determine what you have and where you may need to focus and prioritize.

Starting with an assessment will help you determine a better strategy for your organization, as well as educate you on what it’s going to take to migrate. Although strategic assessments from professional services partners are an investment, helping you firmly support your strategy with industry-leading expertise will set you up for success and reduce the time it will take to update your IT environment. It will also help you be fully aware of the costs and timelines needed so you can balance those with your budgets for the next 3-5 years.

Set Yourself Up for Success with a Custom Assessment

If you’re concerned about compliance or business requirements requiring you to maintain an on-premises environment, we can help you identify the best approach for your specific needs. Our thorough Modern Datacenter Strategy Assessments can be customized to fit your specific needs.

And if you’re ready to determine if the Cloud is right for you, our Azure Accelerate program is designed to operationalize cloud adoption through structured analysis, financial planning, and roadmap development.

Contact us to discover the ROI associated with moving workloads into the cloud, as well as build the roadmap to actually do it while helping you formulate a plan for modernizing your on-premises environments.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is SQL Server 2012 end-of-life ?

Extended support for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 ended on July 12, 2022. If you haven’t migrated or upgraded your SQL Server yet, then it’s critical you do so immediately to mitigate your risk. Contact us today to discuss your options.

When is Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 end-of-life ?

Extended support for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 ends on October 10, 2023. We recommend you review the business implications and our recommended next steps to ensure your business is secure before support ends. Contact us today to discuss your options.

What Does Microsoft End-of-Life Mean?

End of Servicing

When a specific version, feature update, or servicing channel of a product will no longer receive quality or security updates, it has reached the end of servicing.

End of Support

End of Support is the end of Extended Support for products governed by the Fixed Policy (when support and servicing will no longer be available). Customers may purchase paid programs for applicable products.

Extended Security Update (ESU) Program

The Extended Security Update (ESU) program is a last resort option for customers who need to run certain legacy Microsoft products past the end of support. It includes Critical and / or Important security updates, as defined by the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), for a maximum of three years after the product’s End of Extended Support date.

Windows Server Lifecycle Dates

Version	Release Year	Mainstream Support End Year	Extended Support End Year
Windows Server 2022	2021	2026	2031
Windows Server 2019	2018	2024	2029
Windows Server 2016	2016	2022	2027
Windows Server 2012	2012	2018	2023
Windows Server 2012 R2	2013	2018	2023
Windows Server 2008	2008	2015	2020
Windows Server 2008 R2	2009	2015	2020
Windows Server 2003	2003	2010	2015
Windows Server 2003 R2	2006	2010	2015

SQL Server Lifecycle Dates

Version	Release Year	Mainstream Support End Year	Extended Support End Year
SQL Server 2022	2022	2028	2033
SQL Server 2019	2019	2025	2030
SQL Server 2017	2017	2022	2027
SQL Server 2016	2016	2021	2026
SQL Server 2014	2014	2019	2024
SQL Server 2012	2012	2017	2022
SQL Server 2008 R2	2010	2012	2019
SQL Server 2008	2008	2012	2019
SQL Server 2025	2006	2011	2016
SQL Server 2000	2000	2005	2013

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[1] Operating system environment is an operating system instance running on either a physical device, virtual machine, or hardware partition.

Vulnerabilities continue to evolve and become more sophisticated, and part of combatting that is keeping your software and devices up to date with the latest patches. As software ages, eventually, it reaches a point where it is no longer supported, and critical updates like performance optimizations and patches for security are no longer released. Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 are at this point, ending on October 10th, 2023. In this article, we’ll explore the implications of Windows Server 2012 reaching its end of support and discuss the importance of migrating to newer alternatives.

Understanding the End of Support

On October 10th, 2023, Microsoft will officially end support for Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2. The operating systems will no longer receive security updates, bug fixes, or technical assistance from Microsoft. Even though the software will continue to function, your business and stakeholders should be planning for a migration. Using an unsupported operating system poses significant risks to the organization and can cripple your business if exposed.

Security Vulnerabilities

Are you the type of technology user that keeps all your various software and applications up to date? Or do you have a red bubble on your app store indicating you have 36 apps in need of an update? The most pressing concern when using an unsupported operating system is the increased risk of security vulnerabilities. Security updates are regularly released for various types of technology stacks to address vulnerabilities.

Without regular security updates, organizations are more susceptible to cyber-attacks, malware infections, and data breaches. Hackers often narrow in on unsupported systems since they know they will not receive the necessary patches to fix exposed vulnerabilities. It’s estimated that unpatched vulnerabilities are responsible for 60% of all data breaches. A highly publicized example was the WannaCry attack that targeted vulnerabilities in older Windows systems.

Compliance, Regulatory, and Insurance Requirements

Many industries have strict compliance and regulatory requirements that businesses must adhere to. Using an unsupported operating system can jeopardize compliance efforts and make it difficult to meet industry standards. Organizations should evaluate their specific compliance needs and consider upgrading to a supported operating system to maintain regulatory compliance.

Additionally, many cyber insurance policies include exclusions for coverage for security incidents arising due to unsupported or unpatched software. If your organization faces a cybersecurity incident due to exploitation of a vulnerability in Windows Server 2012, your claim may be denied.

Curious to learn more on the topic of cyber insurance? Tangent over to one of our latest webinars and learn more about insuring your protection.

Lack of Technical Support

The end of support also means the end of technical assistance from Microsoft. If businesses encounter any issues or need help troubleshooting problems, they will no longer have access to official Microsoft support channels. This lack of technical support can lead to increased downtime and potential disruptions to business operations.

What to Do Next

If your organization is running Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2012 R2, now is the time to start making a plan to ensure your organization remains secure.

Ideal scenarios include:

Migrating to Azure

In addition to the overall benefits of migrating to the cloud, Microsoft is offering three years of free extended security updates when migrating your Windows Server 2012 workloads to Azure.

Upgrading Your Server

If your organization is not ready to move to the cloud, upgrading your server to Windows Server 2019 is another way to ensure you receive the latest release for security, performance, and innovation.

The end of support for Windows Server 2012 poses significant risks for businesses. Upgrading to newer, support infrastructure is crucial to maintain security, comply with industry regulations, and benefit from improved performance and reliability. By working with an MSP, organizations can receive support in planning and migrating to a newer system and reduce risk for their organization.

The Windows Server 2012 R2 End of Life deadline (October 10, 2023) is almost here. After this date, Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 will stop receiving regular patches or critical security updates, making their security and compliance a serious concern.

As the upgrade process often takes upwards of a year, we urge users to not delay the transition any further. Microsoft recommends the latest upgradable version, which for Windows Server 2012 or 2012 R2, would be Windows Server 2019.

The article below discusses mainstream and extended support, end of support, what you should do if you have to keep using Windows Server 2012 / 2012 R2 past the end of life, and more.

Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 follow the Fixed Lifecycle Policy, as per which Microsoft provides 5 years of Mainstream Support and 5 years of Extended Support.

A product receives all types of updates and support during the Mainstream support period, whereas during the Extended Support period, it stops receiving non-security updates. After the Extended Support period ends, a product reaches the final phase i.e., End of Support.

If necessary, users can opt-in to a premium plan called Extended Security Update to keep receiving updates and support for up to 3 years after the Extended Support period ends. But for those not on this program, there will be no patches or security updates after the product reaches the End of Support.

Mainstream Support

The Mainstream Support phase refers to the first 5 years of a product’s life cycle. During this period, the product receives feature updates, security patches, and service packs. Users can also request non-security updates, incident support, or product feature changes.

For Windows Server 2012 R2, the Mainstream Support phase was from 11/25/2013 to 10/9/2018.

Extended Support

The Extended Support phase refers to the latter 5 years of a product’s lifecycle. During this period, a product only receives security updates, and users can no longer request new design changes or non-security updates.

Windows Server 2012 R2 is currently in the Extended Support phase.

End of Support

As stated, after a product reaches the End of Life phase, Microsoft will stop providing most forms of updates and support for it, making it a security risk.

For customers who are still in the upgrading process or those who need to keep using legacy products, Microsoft offers one final option: the Extended Security Update (ESU) program.

The Windows Server 2012 R2 End of Life date is 10/10/2023.

Extended Security Update (ESU)

ESU is basically a premium plan under which users will keep receiving critical security updates for up to 3 years after the Extended Support phase ends. If you choose to migrate to Azure, you’ll receive these updates for free.

But for those running Windows Server on-premises, you’ll need to purchase the Extended Security Updates annually. The cost for this will be a certain percentage of the cost of the latest Windows Server version, as shown in the table below.

Year	Start Date	End Date	Price
Extended Security Update Year 1	Oct 11, 2023	Oct 8, 2024	75% of License Cost
Extended Security Update Year 2	Oct 9, 2024	Oct 14, 2025	100% of License Cost
Extended Security Update Year 3	Oct 15, 2025	Oct 13, 2026	125% of License Cost

The upside to this plan is that you won’t need to worry about your server’s security while you transition, and as you upgrade parts of your server, you won’t need to keep paying for it in the following year.

On the other hand, the downside is that if you opt into this plan late (2nd or 3rd year), you’ll need to pay for the previous years’ updates as well.

For any further queries, we recommend visiting Microsoft’s Extensive FAQ page, Extended Security Updates FAQ, and Windows Server 2012 End of Support.

Which Windows Server Version Should You Upgrade To?

Windows Server can be upgraded through a max of two versions. The latest upgradeable version for Windows Server 2012 R2 is Windows Server 2019.

Why Can’t I Just Keep Using Windows Server 2012 R2?

As stated, once Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 reach the EOL phase, they will no longer receive critical security updates. This puts them at an increased risk of cyber-attacks and noncompliance. The option to receive a few more years of security updates comes attached with a premium.

To add to this, the newer versions like Windows Server 2019 and 2022 simply offer way more features and better performance.

And if you’re still not sold on moving away from Windows Server 2012 R2, this article on Vulnerability Exploitation might change your mind.

How to Upgrade Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2019?

There are numerous ways to deploy a new Windows Server. But when we say upgrade, we’re specifically talking about an in-place upgrade. An in-place upgrade is the best option for most people as you can upgrade while keeping the same old hardware and configurations.

We recommend reading Windows Server 2012 R2 to 2019 for step-by-step instructions on what to do before, during, and after the upgrade process.