OTOH, not supported doesn't mean it'll continue working indefinitely...
When I was in IT, we had hardware/systems still in production use 10+ years after support ended on it. (why can't they make hard drives like that anymore?) While a mission critical item died 2 months after support ended.
Forcing a major kluge to get financial systems back online...where the kluge remained in place until that mission critical device approached its end of support (last December)....they only finally started upgrading pieces of it last year due to a tax code change requiring they upgrade the software (which required they upgrade to supported/current OS and DB backend....only some components had to move to supported hardware due to Oracle's requirement...other pieces involved blinders...the 2U boxes went end of support a few months before Oracle switched to its lifetime support policy, so the 4U boxes were still on support.)
They weren't interested in having some of the configuration redone better, either... (such as using SSL offloading, which would remove the need for users to use outdated versions of firefox to use its web interface.)
New hardware for that mission critical item had been purchased a couple of years ago, but it was only in limited use as design work on how it was going to be used was still in flux (or maybe completed but being withheld from IT. Once got a request to complete the whole configuration of one section...due yesterday since vendor is here to configure something that requires it, from documents dated 6 months ago.)
Originally, the IT director had said all configuration needed to be done 1 month after its delivery as it was critical to his timeline....a year past the deadline and it was still wasn't ready. It was mandate that central file server migrate off of EOL Windows Server, and the new NAS being behind the new item. The SAN hardware that the Windows Server was using, was supported to also have had its support ended a couple of years ago, as those funds were part of the financing of the new ... solution.
It was funny, they wanted to make sure all parties were satisfied that a dozen /22 IP blocks would be sufficient for the life of the unit, while the previous device only had a single /24 IP block....only half used over its lifetime (including allocated, but now inactive IPs.) The dozen blocks comes from applying 4 security classifications, with 3 application sub-classes in each... (while many of the apps do two of the sub-classes from a single component...such fun.)
I had planned to get an Obi200 + ObiLine to replace my Obi110, but don't recall why it didn't get done...
Probably got lost in the shuffle with all the other unfinished or not yet started projects... I remember being worried that I wouldn't get all the pieces of a pi server I was trying to build in time, which I did get in time, but haven't worked on it in the 6+ months that have passed. Only just getting around to upgrading a disk array using drives I had purchased 2 years ago (plus a drive I got last week.) Prompted by the imminent failure of an old array using 1.5TB drives, of which I no longer have pulled spares for. Maybe after I get the arrays shuffled around, I'll finish the server replacement (have had those pieces for over 6 months too...though due to some creeping, I'm not sure now. Several of my home servers went EOS end of last month....)
TL;DR
The Dreamer.
