Dying Software

Recently I talked about how many of the technologies that we are current coming to an end of their support lifecycle.  Failure to upgrade the technology can cause us problems and here is an example.

We currently use a technology called "iSCSI" to give servers additional storage.  The physical drives are on an iSCSI server and the client essentially maps the space that they are given to one or more drive letters on the local machine.  We have an instance where the space we have allocated is divided into two drive letters:  D: & E:.  The problem arises in the fact that after a restart the second drive (E:) does not always re-appear.  If any application on the server is expecting a drive E: there will be a significant problem.

Microsoft was actually able to recreate the problem on their test machines, but, due to the fact that Windows Server 2000, the operating system that we are using on the client machine, has gone past its Mainstream Support end date, they will not be investing any time in resolving the problem.  They gave us a number of options, but it was pretty much "Good luck and don't bother calling again".

In this case one of the workarounds should fix the problem, but the fact is, if this had been a more serious "production is down everyone come help" type of issue we would have been in serious trouble.

Old technology met new technology and the result was a car wreck.  In order to maintain an operational environment we need to continually update both our hardware and our software.  Being unable to update our software because of dependencies on old versions can cause us some serious trouble.  In this case it was more of an inconvenience than a crisis, but I think we should consider ourselves lucky that our experience was this pleasant. 

If you want to take a look for yourself at what Microsoft products are supported the Lifecycle Information page has a lot of information for you.