Use Windows Server with Skylake and you won’t have to upgrade in 18 months

Intel Skylake die shot. (credit: Intel)

In January Microsoft announced that owners of systems using Skylake processors would have to upgrade to Windows 10 within 18 months of the announcement, and that users of Intel Kaby Lake systems, due to be released later this year, would only be supported in Windows 10.

This raised an obvious question: what will the situation be for users of Windows Server 2008, based on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 R2, based on Windows 7, Windows Server 2012, based on Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 R2, based on Windows 8.1, and the as-yet unreleased Windows Server 2016, based on Windows 10? Specifically, which versions of the server operating system will support Skylake and Kaby Lake, and will server operators be required to upgrade to Windows Server 2016 to get support for these processors?

Today the company answered those questions, and surprisingly, given that the operating systems share so many underlying components, the answer is different.

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments