The most important thing to remember about extended support is that, once it’s expired, the product will be almost entirely unprotected by Microsoft. Non-security hotfixes will not be delivered unless the customer has an extended support agreement with Microsoft – and that comes at a cost.
During extended support, customers will only receive critical security updates and reliability patches. It’s no longer the focus of the Microsoft team, and will likely have been succeeded by at least one more product in the meantime.
#MICROSOFT WINDOWS SERVER 2012 R2 DOWNLOAD ISO SOFTWARE#
Unlike its higher-profile software offerings, like Microsoft 365, Microsoft has a specific lifecycle for its Windows Server products. When does Windows Server 2012 R2 go end-of-life? What do mean by that? And what’s the difference between mainstream and extended support? With that in mind, let’s consider one particular version of Microsoft’s server OS, Windows Server 2012 R2, and its upcoming “true” end-of-life status.
While server operating systems do have very long product lifecycles – 10 years on average – it’s also easy to miss these key dates. If you have an on-site network based on a Windows network, there’s a good chance you also have a server with a flavour of Windows Server running on it. While Windows gets all of the accolades, Windows Server is something of a hidden workhorse, especially for businesses. Windows Server is the unsung hero of Microsoft’s operating system line-up.
Windows Server 2012 R2 is an iterative release of the Server 2012 operating system, original released in October 2013.