April 2003 was such a fine month. SARS caused every person with a sniffle to think they’d die. The war in Iraq was coming to an end (!?). BA and Air France announced the end of supersonic flight. We suspected that North Korea might be playing with nukes. Something called iTunes was launched. I think that was a fad and disappeared quickly (I’m really hoping a digital Indiana Jones reads this in 10,000 years and thinks it’s the truth). And on April 24th 2003, Microsoft released Windows Server 2003.
Happy 10th birthday Windows Server 2003! You were a wonderful operating system. In my first job where I designed/ran a global infrastructure for a corporate, I chose you just 1 month after GA as the basis for the business. Sure, it was a bit bleeding edge. Yes, people did question my decision. But it worked out fantastically.
I don’t drive a 10-year old car. I wouldn’t want to use a van in a courier business that I can’t get spare parts for. In business I want to look forward and be competitive & flexible, instead of clinging to what was right 10 years ago. Makes you wonder why 57% of servers are still running W2003.
End of support is coming on 14/July/2015. I really don’t want to hear excuses. The fact is that the end of extended support is coming. It is time to start planning your migration from the decade-old operating system. It’s time to move to an OS that is built for the way we work now. It is time to pressure vendors and suppliers to support an OS that will actually have some level of support.
Microsoft will not change the date that extended support ends. Stop fooling yourself, and stop listening to people who eat from their own rear-ends. Security patches stop, and Microsoft Support will stop taking your calls. You now have approximately 2 years and 3 months to get moving. And trust me, that time will fly by so don’t procrastinate.
We run Server 2008R2 and looking at 2012 presently. People on 2003 won’t move from something that’s stable, works for them and looks the part, to a OS thats bloated, unstable and looks like a child designed it (scroll bars everywhere in server manager, colours, etc) such as 2012. Ok, MS may say it does Hyper-V well, so does S2008R2, and as far as I’ve seen S208R2 is much more stable, even if it doesn’t have the enchancements of 2012 and the server manager mmc doesn’t exist at all, as on 2012 it does nothing but freeze all the time while updating! Also, at least 2008R2 knows where to look for source files automatically while installing roles and features!
And this, employers, is exactly the sort of person that will hold your business back to the inflexible ways of delivering services to your business.