END-OF-LIFE NOTICE, NO. 788
This Product Bulletin serves as formal notification that Cisco IOS® Software Release 11.3AA will reach its End-of-Sale milestones on the following dates:
DEFINITIONS
End-of-Sale
After this milestone date, the software release may no longer be ordered. Releases which reach this milestone are still available through FSO and CCO for customers under maintenance contract or for Customer Service Engineering (CSE) support until they reach the "End-of-Life" milestone.
End of Engineering
The milestone date after which no scheduled maintenance releases will be produced for the major release. Releases which reach this milestone are still available through FSO and CCO for customers under maintenance contract or for CSE support until they reach the "End-of-Life" milestone.
End of Life
After this milestone date, a minimum of one year following End of Engineering, the software release is no longer officially supported by CSE and is removed from CCO.
MILESTONE PURPOSES
Moving Cisco IOS Software Release 11.3AA through these milestones serves several purposes:
1. To simplify the task of selecting and ordering software for customers and account managers by reducing the number of releases concurrently available
2. To encourage customers to operate their routers with more current Cisco IOS offerings in the12.x families
3. To help focus our development resources on recent releases in order to continue delivering timely, high-quality software releases
4. To improve software support by reducing the number of versions currently available
CUSTOMER IMPACT
This news will have the greatest impact on customers who have settled upon 11.3AA maintenance releases as their "standard" router network software. Important issues to note follow:
1. Customer Engineering (CE) will still answer technical questions regarding Cisco IOS Software Release 11.3AA.
2. To utilize an obsolete release on hardware platforms ordered in the future, customers may maintain the software on a TFTP server at their site and utilize netboot procedures. In most instances, this should not be a major issue since most customers likely keep software backups at their site in order to have a quick retrieval mechanism in case of emergency.
3. The migration path for customers on all platforms who are currently on 11.3AA is 12.0 or 12.0T.
4. Customers needing memory upgrades for the following platforms will be handled on a case-by-case basis:
– 3640: No change in minimum memory requirements.
– 5200: Desktop and Desktop Plus images required 8 MB Flash in 11.3AA; both will require 16 MB Flash in 12.0 and 12.0T.
– 5300: No change in minimum memory requirements.
– 5800: No change in minimum memory requirements.
– 7200: No change in minimum memory requirements.
Nonetheless, please explicitly discuss this issue with your customers utilizing older software releases and ensure that they have the software on site.