System Five Customer Support and Requirements Guide

• System Five 7.x and greater is the supported version moving forward. New System Five installations are limited to version 7 and greater.
• Windward Software supports the current Quarterly General Release plus the previous four Quarterly General Releases. Other requirements related to your needs and environment may override this rolling policy.
• Windows Server 2022 is in Full Support when paired with Actian Zen 15.
• Windows Server 2025 is not yet supported - Database platform support is not yet available.
• Windows 10 is in Limited Support, with End of Life in October 2026.
• System Five versions prior to 7.0.2 and Actian Zen versions prior to 15 are now in Limited Support, approaching a transition to End of Life in October 2026.

Following this guidance helps ensure reliable performance, faster issue resolution, and predictable support outcomes. Running outside these guidelines increases the risk of instability and may limit the assistance Windward Software can provide.

🛈 If you need help determining the current version of System Five or the Actian Database, refer to this knowledge article.

• System Five version 7.0.4.3 or later is the minimum recommended version on Windows 11 due to performance‑impacting changes introduced in Windows 11 service updates.
• Windward Software supports the current Quarterly General Release plus the previous four Quarterly General Releases.
• OS‑specific minimum requirements always take precedence over the rolling release support policy.

Versions 7.0.2 through 7.0.4.2 are not recommended due to known performance and stability risks on Windows 11 experienced by customers with specific environmental factors.

• System Five versions prior to 7.0.2 remain in Full Support until October 2026, aligned with the end of Microsoft Windows 10 extended support.
• After that date, these versions will be End of Life, and Unsupported in any environment.
• All users with current active maintenance are entitled to upgrades to the current supported version of System Five.

• Older versions were designed for earlier operating systems and storage models.
• As platforms evolve, these old versions become increasingly difficult to stabilize and support.
• Focusing support on releases targeting environments with full vendor support allows Windward Software to deliver meaningful fixes, performance improvements, and predictable outcomes.

If you are currently running an older version of System Five:

• Support will focus on functional assistance and upgrade guidance.
• Performance, reliability, or compatibility issues may not be fully resolvable without upgrading.
• As October 2026 approaches, upgrading becomes increasingly important to avoid running unsupported combinations of Windows, database, and System Five versions.

Windward Software strongly recommends planning an upgrade path to a currently supported version of System Five in advance.

Full Support applies only to dedicated, single‑tenant physical hardware. Virtualized deployments receive Limited application‑only support (see Virtualization Policy below for details).

• Windows 11 Professional or Enterprise

• Windows 10 is in Limited Support.
• Support is limited to basic assistance and upgrade planning.
• Windows 10 transitions to End of Life (Unsupported) in October 2026.

Windward Software strongly encourages early migration to Windows 11.

Windward Software does not recommend or support production use of System Five in customer‑managed virtualized environments.

• Full Support applies only to dedicated physical hardware.
• Virtualized deployments receive Limited, application‑only support.
• Customers running System Five in virtualized environments assume all risk of disruption including: performance, stability, availability, data integrity impacts, and 3rd party IT Costs associated with ongoing maintenance and troubleshooting of their unsupported environment.

When System Five is deployed in a virtualized environment:

• Windward Software will provide functional, application‑level assistance only.
• Windward Software will not diagnose or resolve issues related to or caused by:
  • Virtual Machine configuration
  • Performance degradation
  • Storage latency or I/O contention
  • Virtual network instability or access issues
  • Hypervisor configuration or health
  • Host‑level resource contention

If virtualization‑related factors are suspected as the cause of an issue, customers may be required to reproduce the issue on supported, non‑virtualized physical hardware to continue troubleshooting with the assistance of Windward Software Support Services.

Running System Five virtualized in production is done entirely at the customer’s risk.

Running System Five in a virtualized environment commonly leads to significant operational risk when not deployed in a carefully tuned and actively managed infrastructure.

Customers frequently experience slower system response, inconsistent day‑to‑day operation, and unexpected disruptions that affect normal business activities. These issues can lead to delays at point of sale, reduced staff productivity, and periods where the system is partially or fully unavailable. Maintenance events or background processes may cause sudden disruptions without warning, increasing downtime and frustration for users. In some cases, significant data corruption and full or partial loss of critical System Five data has occurred.

Because these issues are caused by factors outside the System Five software and require specialized configuration and ongoing involvement from internal or third‑party IT staff, Windward Software Support cannot guarantee stable or reliable operation of System Five in these environments.

If a customer elects to deploy System Five in a virtualized environment, Windward Software support is limited to application‑level assistance only. All troubleshooting related to the operational integrity of the system and the virtualized environment itself falls outside Windward Software's Scope of Support and remeains the customers responsibility.

When diagnosing issues in a virtualized environment, customers must independently evaluate and remediate factors including, but not limited to:

• Host‑level resource contention
  • CPU over‑commitment, CPU ready time, or lack of pinned or dedicated vCPUs
  • Memory ballooning, swapping, or dynamic memory allocation
• Storage architecture and performance
  • Shared SAN or NAS performance and queue depth
  • Thin‑provisioned or burstable storage tiers
  • Snapshot chains, replication lag, or backup‑related I/O interference
  • Inconsistent or high disk latency at the hypervisor layer
• Hypervisor configuration and health
  • Scheduler behavior, NUMA alignment, and host oversubscription
  • Host maintenance activity, live migration, or failover events
  • Version compatibility between hypervisor, guest OS, and storage drivers
• Network virtualization and connectivity
  • Virtual switches, VLAN configuration, and MTU mismatches
  • Packet loss, jitter, or latency introduced by virtual networking layers
  • Firewall, IDS/IPS, or traffic‑shaping applied at the host or virtual network level
• Third‑party tooling and services
  • Backup agents, antivirus, endpoint protection, or monitoring tools running inside the VM
  • Host‑based security or compliance tooling impacting I/O or process scheduling

Windward Software will not diagnose, tune, or validate hypervisor, storage, network, or host‑level configurations. If virtualization‑related factors are suspected or identified, customers may be required to:

• Engage their virtualization or infrastructure provider, or
• Reproduce the issue on supported, non‑virtualized physical hardware, or
• Migrate the workload to a Windward‑managed cloud environment.

• Windward‑managed cloud services, where virtualization is purpose‑built, configured, and supported for System Five workloads
• Dedicated, single‑tenant physical (bare‑metal) servers

What this means

The product version or setup you are using is current and fully supported.

What you can expect

• We actively support and maintain this version
• Issues are investigated and fixed when needed
• Updates may include bug fixes, performance improvements, and reliability enhancements
• These are the version we recommend for all customers

What this means

Your product version is no longer current, and will receive best effort support focused around application usage and full support of upgrade planning.

What you can expect

• We will assist on a best‑effort basis
• Fixes and improvements are limited and not always possible
• Some issues may require you to upgrade before they can be resolved
• Compatibility with newer systems or environments is not guaranteed

In simple terms

We can help, but there are limits. An upgrade is strongly recommended to avoid risk and disruption.

Important to know

Limited Support is not a sudden cutoff. It is a transition period designed to give you time to plan and move forward.

What this means

The product version or setup is no longer supported.

What you can expect

• We cannot troubleshoot or fix issues
• We cannot confirm compatibility with your systems
• We will assist you in upgrade planning.

In simple terms

We are unable to help until you upgrade. Continuing to run this version carries risk.

What this means #

A General Release is a fully validated, production‑ready version that has completed testing and is approved for broad customer use.

What you can expect #

• Intended for production and business‑critical environments
• Fully tested for stability, performance, and compatibility
• Eligible for full support under our standard support agreements
• May receive bug fixes, reliability improvements, and servicing updates
• New Releases Quarterly

In simple terms #

This is the safest and most recommended version to run.

What this means #

A Release Candidate is a near‑final version that is functionally complete but still undergoing final validation before becoming a General Release.

What you can expect #

• Intended for evaluation, testing, and early validation
• Feature complete, but may still contain unresolved issues
• Limited support, typically focused on feedback and issue identification
• Changes may still occur before the final General Release
• Not recommended for production use, except in specific circumstances

In simple terms #

This version is almost ready, but not yet final. It is best used in non‑production or pilot environments.

Important to know #

A Release Candidate may be used in production only when a customer has an urgent need for a specific fix or change and waiting for the next General Release is not feasible. In these cases:

• Usage should be limited in scope where possible
• The expectation is to move to the next General Release once available

Release Candidates help us validate real‑world usage scenarios and improve overall quality before a General Release.

What this means #

In some cases, an issue is significant enough that waiting for the next planned General Release is not appropriate. In these situations, we may choose to deliver a hotfix that is promoted directly to General Release.

When we make this decision #

We consider a hotfix General Release when one or more of the following apply:

• The issue has a material impact on customer operations, stability, or data integrity
• The issue affects multiple customers or has a high likelihood of broader impact
• There is no viable workaround that avoids customer risk
• Deferring the fix until the next scheduled release would create unacceptable disruption

What you can expect #

• The fix is narrowly scoped to address the specific issue
• Testing is focused and risk‑based, prioritizing safety and regression avoidance
• The release is treated as a fully supported General Release once issued
• Customers on affected versions are strongly encouraged to upgrade

In simple terms #

If something is important enough and urgent enough, we fix it properly and release it—not as an experiment, but as a supported version you can rely on.

• General Releases align with Fully Supported versions in our support lifecycle
• Release Candidates are not intended to remain in long‑term production use