Having a hard time figuring out the Microsoft Product Support Lifecycle (also referred to as the end of life date) for SBS 2003? Selecting one of the Windows Small Business Server 2003 options from http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifeselectserv makes me feel like I need a flowchart to decipher the notes.

For the easy one, SBS 2003 WITHOUT SBS SP1 went end of life on 7/10/2007. If you still haven't installed SBS 2003 SP1, do it now!

SBS 2003 SP1 falls under the following rules:

Support ends 24 months after the next service pack releases or at the end of the product's support lifecycle, whichever comes first. For more information, please see the service pack policy at http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/#ServicePackSupport .

SBS 2003 R2 Premium and Standard fall under these rules:

The support date for this product package is determined by its individual component product’s respective support lifecycles. Please review the individual component product’s support lifecycle to determine its length of support.

Are you wondering when you are going to have time to look all the products up and check 'em out for their individual dates? I was. Thankfully, Lennart Wistrand with the SBS team has done some of the back-end work for us to make it simpler. Use Lennart's notes below (valid as of 1/11/2009) to help you figure out the end date for your version of SBS03:

Important dates to keep in mind for SBS 2003 when reading its lifecycle.

• http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=1773: Exchange Server 2003’s EOL date is April 8, 2014.
• http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=7022: Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 is July 9, 2013.
• http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2852: SQL Server 2000 goes out of support on April 9, 2013.

Customers would need to be on ISA Server 2004 and WSUS 3.0 for the server to be supported up until these dates. For SBS2K3 R2 customers, the SQL date is later than the Exchange date.

Thank you Lennart!!