Cisco Hardware Lifecycle Policy
What Cisco's published policy says about lifecycle phases, support windows, and end-of-life timing.
This page summarizes Cisco End-of-Life Policy (Effective for EoL notifications on or after September 29, 2022) and quotes Cisco's own phase definitions verbatim. For the authoritative current statement, follow the link to Cisco's policy doc.
Lifecycle phases
| Cisco phase | Cisco's definition (verbatim) | Our field |
|---|---|---|
| End-of-Life Announcement Date | "The date the document that announces the end-of-sale and end-of-life of a product is distributed to the general public." | announcement_date |
| End-of-Sale Date | "The Product is no longer offered for sale after this date. This is also the last date to order the Product through Cisco point-of-sale mechanisms." | end_of_sale_date |
| End of SW Maintenance Releases Date | "The last date that Cisco Engineering may release any final software maintenance releases or bug fixes. After this date, Cisco Engineering will no longer develop, repair, maintain, or test the product software." | end_of_sw_maintenance_date |
| End of Vulnerability/Security Support | "The last date that Cisco Engineering may release a planned maintenance release or scheduled software remedy for a security vulnerability issue." | end_of_vuln_security_support_date |
| Last Date of Support | "The last date to receive applicable service and support for the product as entitled by active service contracts or by warranty terms and conditions. After this date, all support services for the product are unavailable, and the product becomes obsolete." | last_date_of_support |
Default support windows
External notification of end of sale is typically six (6) months before the End of Sale (EOS) date. The Last customer ship date for hardware is three (3) months after the hardware EOS date. Cisco will provide one (1) year of routine failure analysis for hardware from the EOS date, five (5) years of TAC support for hardware from the EOS date, and five (5) years of replacement parts for hardware from the EOS date, in accordance with Cisco's Return Materials Authorization (RMA) process.
Source: Cisco End-of-Life Policy.
Cisco products tracked here
We track lifecycle dates for 8107 Cisco products across 41 platform families. See the full Cisco catalog for upcoming end-of-sale, end-of-support, and replacement information per SKU.
For cross-vendor terminology comparison, see lifecycle terminology. For compliance impact of vendor lifecycle milestones, see compliance and insurance.
Sources
- Cisco End-of-Life Policy: the vendor's own policy doc.
- Sample Cisco EoL bulletin (IOS XE 17.15.x) showing the standard milestone definitions
Last reviewed .