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Lifecycle Definitions XenServer

  • General Availability (GA) is the date that signifies a new product release may be ordered and fulfilled in all applicable languages, discount programs, delivery methods, and worldwide geographies.


    With General Availability of a new release, some applicable offerings of the previous release will be phased out:

    • Evaluations and Not for Resale offerings based on the previous product release will be immediately replaced by offerings based on the new release.
    • Media kits SKUs based on the previous product release will be available for a period of six months following GA of the new release.  Downloads of the product release will remain available until the End of Life date.

  • Notice of Status Change (NSC) is the date on which Citrix publicly communicates the specific dates for a product’s End of Maintenance (EOM) and End of Support/Life (EOS/L). This information is posted within the Product Matrix or Legacy Product Matrix Tables.  For new products, status change dates will be communicated on the product’s General Availability date. The standard policy will set the EOM date a minimum of three years following the GA date, and the EOL date a minimum of five years following the GA date. In addition, Citrix will post an End of Sales (EOS) date at its own determination.


  • End of Sales (EOS) is the date that a specific software or appliance release will no longer be available for purchase.

    For the majority of Citrix products which incorporate a date based license model, the EOS date is generally not applicable since new connection licenses work with previous product versions. In the event a product line under a date based license model is being brought through EOL, there will be a minimum 90 days notice of the EOS date.

    The few Citrix products that may have been added to the portfolio via a recent acquisition, or have yet to transition to the date based license model, will typically offer a licensing method that associates connection licenses to the product version.  In these cases, there will also be a minimum 90 days notice of the EOS date.

    The 90 day notice period provides customers the opportunity to purchase additional licenses to allow for growth while they plan for a version upgrade or deployment of a new release.



  • End of Maintenance (EOM) is the date that signifies a specific product release will have no further code level maintenance other than security and critical updates. Code level maintenance is typically delivered in the form of Service Packs, Hotfixes, or Hotfix Rollup Packs. The release of a Service Pack or Hotfix Rollup Pack may define a new maintenance baseline for the product. Citrix customers may be required to upgrade to a Service Pack or Hotfix Rollup Pack to receive continued maintenance on the product. After the EOM date, technical support continues as before but code level maintenance will be limited to security related issues and other issues deemed critical by Citrix.  Security issues could be related to publicly identified security vulnerabilities, other security vulnerabilities, or Microsoft’s publicly released security updates.


  • End of Life (EOL) is the date on which security related and critical hot fixes, technical support and product download(s) will no longer be available. Technical support for other issues will be limited to information contained in the Citrix Knowledge Base and Support Forums. If the issues are unable to be corrected through this method, then an upgrade path or migration to the latest version or product replacement is recommended.