14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is retiring support for the RTM Build of Exchange Server 2010 today, October 11, 2011. There isn’t much that customers can do, except make the jump to a more recent release of the product, in order to continue benefiting from support.
The Redmond company’s advice is obviously for Exchange Server 2010 RTM to be upgraded to Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1).
The first upgrade for Exchange Server 2010 was released a little over a year ago, in August 2010, introducing a number of enhancements that should have been sufficient incentive to catalyze upgrades.
Customers that are still running Exchange Server 2010 RTM at the time of this article are advised to deploy SP1 as soon as possible.
Come October 12, Exchange Server 2010 SP1 will be the only release of the product still supported by the software giant, at least for the immediate future.
Microsoft is currently hard at work on wrapping up the second upgrade for Exchange Server 2010. The company has yet to reveal a specific availability deadline, but it promised to offer Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 (SP2) to customers sometime by the end of this year.
Fact is that Exchange Server 2010 RTM to Exchange Server 2010 RTM SP1 upgrades should not be postponed until SP2 hits general availability.
It’s important to note that Microsoft is discontinuing support only for the RTM Build of Exchange Server 2010, and not for the product.
The Mainstream Support End Date for Exchange Server 2010 is 1/13/2015, but customers will be able to take advantage of Extended Support until 1/14/2020, namely for approximately eight more years.
Still, in order to do so, they need to be running the latest supported release only, which in this case is Exchange Server 2010 RTM SP1.
Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) RTM is available for download here.