Windows Azure Updates

We recently published an updated support life cycle policy for Windows Azure Cloud Services for web and worker roles. This email outlines these new policies and the associated timelines for migration:

Changes to Guest OS families
The Guest OS 1.x family based on the Windows Server 2008 operating system is being retired. We are providing 12 months advance notice to you. The official retirement date for the Guest OS 1.x family is June 1, 2014. After that date, you’ll no longer be able to deploy new web and worker roles with family 1.x deployments, and your existing family 1.x deployments will be automatically moved to a supported Guest OS family.

Please plan to transition your Cloud Services deployments that use the Guest OS 1.x family to the following supported Guest OS families:

Customers who are using the Guest OS 1.x family don’t need to redeploy their Cloud Services because an in-place upgrade from version 1.x to 3.x is supported in the Windows Azure SDK 2.0. If you don’t upgrade by the June 1, 2014, deadline, you’ll automatically be upgraded to a supported Guest OS family.

Changes to Guest OS version
On June 1, 2013, the new Guest OS Version support policy becomes effective. Starting June 1, you have 60 days to upgrade your Cloud Services deployments to the current or prior Guest OS version in each supported Guest OS family.

As soon as possible, please start the transition of your Cloud Services deployments to one of the following supported Guest OS versions:

The official retirement date for all previous Guest OS versions is August 1, 2013. Any Guest OS deployment that’s not running one of these supported Guest OS versions at that time will be automatically upgraded to the current Guest OS version.

Changes to Windows Azure SDK for Cloud Services
We’re also announcing the retirement of the Windows Azure SDK versions 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5. The official retirement date for the above SDKs will be June 1, 2014. After that date, you’ll no longer be able to use these SDKs to author and deploy new Cloud Services (web and worker roles). Further, Customer’s Cloud Services authored & deployed using deprecated Windows Azure SDK will not be covered under Windows Azure Cloud Services SLA. Customer’s Cloud Service will not be covered under support contract as well.

Notifications
The OS and SDK retirement dates will be communicated to customers through an MSDN or RSS feed:

To get more details, refer to the support life cycle policy.


Thank you,

Windows Azure Team