Documentation › Using Steward IT Census
End of life
Operating systems and server programs stop getting security updates on a date their maker announces. After that day, newly found vulnerabilities stay open for good. Census shows, for every computer, until when its operating system and its server programs are supported, so you can plan replacements and upgrades before the date passes.
What is covered#
- Operating systems: Windows 10 and 11 (by release and edition: Home, Pro, Enterprise, Education, LTSC), Windows Server 2008 to 2025 and the annual channel releases, macOS, Debian (and Raspberry Pi OS, which follows Debian), Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, CentOS and CentOS Stream, Oracle Linux, Fedora, Alpine, SUSE Linux Enterprise, openSUSE Leap, Linux Mint, Amazon Linux, FreeBSD, VMware ESXi, Proxmox VE, and FortiOS, PAN-OS, RouterOS and Cisco IOS XE devices whose version Census reads.
- Programs (Windows and macOS): SQL Server, Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, Office 2007 to 2024 (not Microsoft 365, which is always current), Visual Studio, .NET, Oracle Java, Eclipse Temurin, Amazon Corretto, Microsoft Build of OpenJDK, Python, Node.js, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, PowerShell 7, Apache Tomcat, PHP and Veeam Backup & Replication.
Linux packages (for example Python or PostgreSQL installed from the distribution) follow the support of the distribution itself. Rolling releases such as Arch Linux have no end of life.
For SQL Server, Census can't see the installed service pack from the program list and assumes the newest one; the asset page says so.
Where you see it#
- Asset Summary: the Operating system panel has a Security updates row: green Until a date, orange Ends a date when the end is near, red Ended when it has passed. Where Microsoft or another maker sells extended security updates (ESU), the paid end date is shown too. Matched server programs are listed in a Program support panel.
- Reports (category End of life): Operating systems past end of support, Operating systems reaching end of support, Programs past end of support, Programs reaching end of support and the End-of-life overview (every release found, its status and how many assets have it). Like any report, they can go on the dashboard, be emailed on a schedule, or send an alert when an asset appears on them.
Settings#
Configuration › Vulnerabilities & compliance › End of life:
- Warn this many days before the end (default 180): releases ending within this time count as reaching end of support.
- Download updated end-of-life data once a week (on by default): the dates come from the public data of endoflife.date. Census has a copy built in and replaces it with a fresh download once a week; nothing about your network is sent. Turn it off for servers without internet access: Census then uses the copy built into its version, which is updated with every Census release. Download now fetches the data at once.