It marks the fourth long-term support (LTS) release of the world's favourite free operating system, with maintenance updates guaranteed for five years.

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We let the guys at Amazon worry about the security, maintenance and operating system upgrades.

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The company will continue to deliver free security fixes for the operating system beyond this cutoff date, however maintenance updates will require the purchase of extended support from Microsoft.

ENGADGET: Microsoft extends free Windows Server 2008 support through January 15th, 2015