Windows Server 2008 & 2008 R2 End of Support (EoS) only 1 year away! [VIDEO]

[Willa]

Did you know that Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 is one of the most popular offerings ever for Microsoft? There are still roughly 20 million servers running this operating system¹ (OS) and we bet you have several customers who are… But this OS was designed for a different era when cloud computing and cybersecurity were not as big as they are today.

 Windows Server 2008 End of Support: Just the Facts

After January 14, 2020, it is going to be a real challenge to run a business on this legacy operating system. While many organizations may be tempted to wait until the very last second for the end of support deadline, there are several very compelling reasons to do it as soon as possible! In the next three videos of this series, Kyle Todd, Microsoft Category Leader for Hewlett Packard, examines three reasons to migrate to a newer, supported generation of Windows Server on HPE Gen10 servers sooner rather than later.

#1 Risk of Cyber Attack

You've probably heard several scary facts about cybercrime and the current versions of Windows Server have protection that simply wasn't available in Windows Server 2008. Credential Guard, for example, can protect users against a hacker stealing passwords to break into a data center while Device Guard helps to keep cyber criminals from loading malware that could cause damage. And, in the rare case that someone does manage to get in you can now detect them quicker and figure out how they got in to keep it from happening again. These are all security features that didn't exist with Windows Server 2008.

And, the improved security doesn’t stop with the OS… Gen10 servers from Hewlett Packard Enterprise offer advanced protection as well with HPE Silicon Root of Trust. In addition, HPE is the only volume server vendor to comply with the most stringent guidelines for encryption both from the commercial market and the US federal government. This level of protection didn't even exist when many of these legacy servers were manufactured. So, if you're running Windows Server 2008, you're on a system with a lot less protection than you can get today.

#2 Cost Savings 

IT efficiency, or cost savings, is another great benefit of migrating to a newer version of Windows Server on HPE Gen10 Servers. Container technology found in Windows Server 2016 offer several benefits, but the easiest to measure is probably cost savings. Did you know that containers require far less system resources than virtual machines? As a result, customers can run a lot more applications on one server with containers than they could with virtual machines. For customers running Windows Server 2008, VMs are their only option… but when they upgrade to a modern OS they can run more workloads faster on fewer servers and reduce the cost of infrastructure.

On the hardware side there are several new features that also help reduce the cost of infrastructure such as Core Boosting, Jitter Smoothing, and Workload Matching.
- Core Boosting: Maximize the performance of all the cores in the processors². Lower core-based licensing costs by requiring fewer cores.  
- Jitter Smoothing: Achieve lower latency while maximizing performance when leveraging Intel Turbo Boost mode. Dynamically tunes to maximize performance for workloads.
- Workload Matching: Quickly tune BIOS settings with preconfigured server profiles that match the workload and optimize performance and/or RAS.

#3 Cloud Alternatives

You may have heard that Microsoft has announced special support provisions for Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 customers who migrate their old applications straight to the public cloud… and you may have customers who think this is an attractive way to address the End of Support deadline. But, a study from IDC may make them think twice… According to IDC, 85% of Public Cloud customers plan to move applications AWAY from the Public Cloud in 2019³. For one reason or another, whether it is performance, or data security, or cost, not all applications belong in the cloud. So it is important to know that if customers migrate their applications to the public cloud, they have the option of pulling them back.

After the end of support deadline, if they've moved an outdated application on an out of support OS to run on a virtual machine in the cloud and then realize they want to pull it back... they’ve really painted themselves into a corner. That's why we think the better solution is to modernize the environment on a current version of Windows Server because then they've got the flexibility to run their applications wherever they want.

Reach out to your customers who are still running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 and start helping them make plans to upgrade to a newer generation of Windows Server. An upgrade from Windows Server 2008 is a great opportunity to take advantage of all of the innovation that has taken place over the last 10 years. Although a year may seem like a long time, when you consider everything that has to be done... it's really not that far away so don't let your customers put it off any longer!

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1. Source: CMR: MTS H1 2018, 01/2018
2. Core Boosting requires the use of HPE exclusive Intel Xeon Scalable Processors – Gold 6143 or Platinum 8165.
3. IDC, Cloud Repatriation Accelerates in a MultiCloud World, doc #US44185818, August 2018