On-premises products

Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 will reach the end of their support lifecycle on October 10, 2023, and three years of Extended Security Updates will be available to purchase from that date, ending on October 13, 2026.…

Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 reached the end of their support lifecycle on January 14, 2020, with the three years of Extended Security Updates coming to an end on January 10, 2023. Microsoft have announced that customers…

The ESU licenses are Standard and Datacenter Core licenses, sold in 2- or 16-packs, and follow the Windows Server 2022 licensing rules. You only need to purchase them for the servers that you want to protect, and the underlying Windows…

When Windows Server products reach the end of their support lifecycle, Microsoft no longer programmatically provide regular security updates for these products. However, customers who need to continue running these versions of Windows Server can purchase Extended Security Updates (ESU)…

A Servicing Channel controls how often feature updates are applied to software, and up until the release of Windows Server 2022 there were two Servicing Channels available for Standard and Datacenter editions of Windows Server: the Long-Term Servicing Channel and…

A User SL for an Online Service that includes rights to access a licensed on-premises server is known as a CAL equivalent license. Because the User SL is a subscription license it’s deemed to be equivalent to the latest version…

Both editions of Windows Server include downgrade rights, so purchasing Windows Server 2022 Datacenter licenses allows you to run any previous version of Datacenter edition, and the same goes for Windows Server 2022 Standard.  Windows Server 2022 Datacenter also has down-edition rights allowing you…

Customers with Software Assurance on both their Windows Server 2022 Standard and/or Datacenter Core licenses and CALs are entitled to special rights for Disaster Recovery scenarios. They can install Windows Server on a “cold” – that is, a turned off – backup…

Organizations might choose to deploy apps in containers rather than virtual machines so let’s take a look at the licensing of Windows Server Containers, and Microsoft define two types of containers in the Product Terms. Firstly, there’s a Windows Server…