The California Department of Technology issued a Technical Alert this week, reminding state agencies and departments to begin immediately planning for the migration from Windows 2008 servers if they haven’t already done so.
“Utilizing Windows 2008 servers beyond January 14, 2020, would present significant business and security risks for programs and applications running on those servers,” CDT says in the notice. “Newer versions of the Windows server operating system provide benefits in security, software and hardware stability, virtualization and consolidation opportunities, and support.”
CDT notes that the contract will not be extended, and the department won’t provide Windows 2008 “Extended Security Updates” contracts to state users.
Windows 2008 doesn’t meet CDT’s Software Maintenance requirements, so state users must put in Service Requests for new server builds as soon as possible, the department says.
“Due to the high volume of server build requests anticipated, customers are encouraged to submit their Service Request (SR) as soon as possible,” the notice says.
Agencies and departments “should attach a migration plan to the SR, for Windows 2008 servers to be migrated to Windows 2016 servers, and/or indicate that the server will be decommissioned by a specified date.”
CDT says users may consider alternatives provided by Microsoft, including upgrading to a newer version of Windows (preferably Windows 2016), or migrating to Azure to continue receiving support for Windows 2008 beyond January 2020.
