RIP Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

An era is coming to an end. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS was released in the spring of 2012. At the 28th of April 2017 the support for this Ubuntu Version will comming to a close.
Each user now has the task to upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu.
As a hoster with the mission to take care of the systems of our customers, we have a scarily high number of servers we have to take care of. Even if we are up to this task, we still need the cooperation of our customers, as we have to prevent possible failures. And a few of our customers, don’t see the the problems, that we are up to in the future.
As i mentioned above, our mission is to keep the systems up and running, including new updates and the task of ensuring the security. But if we are not able to perform the upgrades, we won’t be able to ensure the security or to keep the system up to date.
A similar case will come up with Debian in May 2018. Debian 7,8 are available as LTS, which are maintained by the community (volunteers and companies, which are interested in it – but not by the Debian Security Team). Anyway, Debian 7 will be end of life at the 31st of May 2018.
So we will have to get trough the same topic again.
When the end of life of a distributions version approaches, it doesn’t mean that there won’t be any updates for the packages you have installed, but there won’t be any updates to keep your systems safe. And that is, what you should keep in mind.
The next releases of Ubuntu and wether they will be LTS, you can see in the diagram below. Ubuntu 14.04 will be supported until April 2019, so there will be enough time to think about a good strategy for upgrading.