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Discover guidelines for IBM Cloud products nearing the end of their cycle of service
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What is the lifecycle policy for IBM Cloud products?

The policy provides guidelines for all IBM Cloud® portfolio products (compute, storage, software, bandwidth and so forth) slated for end of marketing (EOM) or end of support (EOS). Products slated for EOS will be announced 90 days before EOS using the IBM Cloud product lifecycle site in documentation for IBM Cloud.

See the End of Life EOL documentation for Classic software →
See the End of Life EOL documentation for VPC software →
Defined terms You will see the following terms all connected with IBM Cloud product offerings. General availability (GA)

The effective date that product becomes available to users (when version and release are published on lifecycle website).

 End of marketing (EOM)

The effective date the product ceases to be active on the standard price list and can no longer be ordered or purchased.

 End of support announcement dates (EOS AD)

The date IBM Cloud announces the end of support for a product currently offered—normally 90 days before the actual EOS date.

 End of support (EOS)

The last date IBM Cloud will deliver standard support, imaging or reload services for a given version or release of a product.

IBM Cloud product lifecycle chart

 

Product/Version:

Lifecycle information:

1 GB iSCSI offering (version: N/A)
  • Upgrade option: 10 GM iSCSI
  • Policy: Portfolio¹
  • EOS AD: 13 Oct 2014
  • EOM: 30 Sep 2014
  • EOS: 19 Jan 2015

1 GB NAS offering (version: N/A)
  • Upgrade option: 10 GB NAS
  • Policy: Portfolio
  • EOS AD: 13 Oct 2014
  • EOM: 30 Sep 2014
  • EOS: 19 Jan 2015

24x7x365 NOC monitoring (version: All)
  • Upgrade option: All
  • Policy: Service
  • EOS AD: 31 Mar 2017
  • EOM: N/A
  • EOS: 30 Jun 2017

32-bit operating systems (version: All)
  • Upgrade option: 64-bit operating systems
  • Policy: Software²
  • EOS AD: 15 Aug 2016
  • EOM: 1 Sep 2016
  • EOS: 1 Jan 2017

Advanced monitoring by Nimsoft (version: N/A)
  • Upgrade option: Retiring from portfolio. Consider monitoring with Sysdig as an alternative
  • Policy: Service
  • EOS AD: 30 Mar 2020
  • EOM: 8 May 2020
  • EOS: 8 Jul 2020

Auto Scale for Classic Virtual Servers (version: N/A)
  • Upgrade option: Auto Scale functionality exists in VPC
  • Policy: Service
  • EOS AD: 30 Sep 2022
  • EOM: 30 Jul 2022
  • EOS: 29 Jun 2022

Big data – Solution Designer, Cloudera, Hadoop CDH, MongoDB, Riak³ (version: All)
  • Upgrade option: Retiring Solution Designer from portfolio
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: 31 Feb 2014
  • EOM: 31 Oct 2014
  • EOS: 31 Jan 2015

Citrix NetScaler VPX (version: 10.x, 11.x)
  • Upgrade option: 12.x
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: N/A
  • EOM: 31 Mar 2021
  • EOS: 30 June 2021

Cloudera Hadoop (version: CDH 4)
  • Upgrade option: CDH 5 (IBM Marketplace)
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: 11 May 2015
  • EOM: 11 May 2015
  • EOS: 10 Aug 2015

CloudLinux (version: 6.x)
  • Upgrade option: Retiring from Portfolio
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: 30 Aug 2020
  • EOM: 30 Sep 2020
  • EOS: 30 Nov 2020

CoreOS (version: Stable)
  • Upgrade option: CentOS 6.x or 7.x
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: 20 Feb 2016
  • EOM: 30 Mar 2018
  • EOS: 31 May 2018

EVault plug-in for Microsoft Exchange (version: 7.3)
  • Upgrade option: Vendor EOL
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: 5 Feb 2015
  • EOM: 18 Feb 2015
  • EOS: 5 May 2015

Existing iSCSI offering (version: N/A)
  • Upgrade option: Retiring from portfolio. Please consider using Performance or Endurance, Block Storage
  • Policy: Portfolio
  • EOS AD: 1 May 2015
  • EOM: 16 Mar 2015
  • EOS: 31 Jul 2015

F-Secure (version: All)
  • Upgrade option: Retiring from portfolio
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: 13 Sep 2014
  • EOM: 13 Oct 2014
  • EOS: 19 Jan 2015

F5 Global Load Balancer (version: 2014)
  • Upgrade option: Retiring from portfolio. Consider using IBM Cloud Internet Services as an alternative
  • Policy: Portfolio
  • EOS AD: 12 Jun 2018
  • EOM: 6 Jul 2018
  • EOS: 12 Sept 2018

Flex Imaging (version: N/A)
  • Upgrade option: Retiring from portfolio
  • Policy: Portfolio
  • EOS AD: 31 May 2017
  • EOM: N/A
  • EOS: 7 Aug 2017

FortiGate Security Appliance 1Gbps / Dedicated Firewall (version: All)
  • Upgrade option: Juniper vSRX, Virtual router appliance, or FortiGate Security Appliance 10Gbps
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: N/A
  • EOM: 18 Aug 2020
  • EOS: July 21 2021

IBM Local Load Balancer (version: All)
  • Upgrade option: IBM Cloud Load Balancer
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: 31 Jan 2020
  • EOM: 1 Jun 2019
  • EOS: 31 May 2020

Message queue service (version: N/A)
  • Upgrade option: Retiring from portfolio
  • Policy: Portfolio
  • EOS AD: 31 Jan 2017
  • EOM: 28 Oct 2016
  • EOS: 20 Jun 2017

Microsoft SQL Server (version: 2005: Express, Workgroup, Standard and Enterprise Editions)
  • Upgrade option: 2014 Standard or Enterprise Edition
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: 19 Aug 2015
  • EOM: 30 Oct 2015
  • EOS: N/A

Microsoft SQL Server (version: 2008: Express, Express R2, Workgroup and Workgroup R2 Editions)
  • Upgrade option: 2014 Standard or Enterprise Edition
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: 19 Aug 2015
  • EOM: 30 Oct 2015
  • EOS: N/A

Microsoft SQL Server (version: 2012 Express Edition)
  • Upgrade option: 2014 Standard or Enterprise Edition
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: 19 Aug 2015
  • EOM: 30 Oct 2015
  • EOS: N/A

Microsoft SQL Server (version: 2014 Express Edition)
  • Upgrade option: 2014 Standard or Enterprise Edition
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: 19 Aug 2015
  • EOM: 30 Oct 2015
  • EOS: N/A

Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise (version: 2008 Standard and Web Editions)
  • Upgrade option: 2016 Standard or Enterprise Edition
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: 27 Oct 2016
  • EOM: 23 Nov 2016
  • EOS: 31 Mar 2017

MySQL (version: 5.6)
  • Upgrade option: MySQL 5.7
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: 25 Mar 2021
  • EOM: 24 Apr 2021
  • EOS: 23 Jun 2021

NAS/FTP storage (version: N/A)
  • Upgrade option: Retiring from portfolio. Please consider using block or file storage as an alternative
  • Policy: Portfolio
  • EOS AD: Portfolio
  • EOM: N/A
  • EOS: TBD

Red Hat Satellite Server (version: 6.1)
  • Upgrade option: 6.4.3 or 6.5
  • Policy: Service
  • EOS AD: 22 Apr 2019
  • EOM: 5 Jul 2019
  • EOS: 31 May 2024

SSL Certificate Order
  • Upgrade option: Secrets Manager
  • Policy: Service
  • EOS AD: 15 Dec 2023
  • EOM: 15 Apr 2024
  • EOS: 15 Dec 2024

VMware Server Virtualization (version: 7.0 all versions)
  • Upgrade option: 7.0
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: N/A
  • EOM: 2 Jan 2025
  • EOS: 2 Apr 2025

Virtual web host (version: N/A)
  • Upgrade option: Retiring from portfolio
  • Policy: Portfolio
  • EOS AD: 27 Jan 2015
  • EOM: 30 Jun 2015
  • EOS: 1 Apr 2015

VMware ESX (version: 4.x)
  • Upgrade option: 6.x
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: N/A
  • EOM: 30 Sep 2014
  • EOS: N/A

VMware ESXi (version: 5.1)
  • Upgrade option: 6.x
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: 2 Feb 2016
  • EOM: 31 Mar 2016
  • EOS: 24 Aug 2016

VMware ESXi (version: 5.5)
  • Upgrade option: 6.0 or 6.5
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: 26 Jul 2017
  • EOM: 1 Sep 2017
  • EOS: 18 Sep 2018

VMware NSX-V (version: 6.0 thru 6.4.10)
  • Upgrade option: VMware NSX-T
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: N/A
  • EOM: 21 Jun 2022
  • EOS: 15 Oct 2022

VMware Server Virtualization (version: 6.7 all versions)
  • Upgrade option: 7.0
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: N/A
  • EOM: 21 Jun 2022
  • EOS: 15 Oct 2022

VMware Server Virtualization (version: 6.5, 6.5u1)
  • Upgrade option: 6.5u2, 6.5u3,6.7.x
  • Policy: Software
  • EOS AD: N/A
  • EOM: 10 Oct 2021
  • EOS: 15 Oct 2022
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Footnotes

¹ IBM Cloud Portfolio Policy – focuses on compute, storage, bandwidth and other IaaS portfolio items offered by SoftLayer®, an IBM Company

² IBM Cloud Software Policy – focuses on vendor storage that is resold to IBM Cloud customers

³ DB Software Solutions will still be available