Operating systems

Microsoft releases new versions of the Windows operating systems every few years and also phases out older versions at a similar rate. Microsoft has formalized this policy in Microsoft Support Lifecycle.

It is the general policy of BlueCielo to only support current Windows versions because testing and supporting BlueCielo products with specific Windows versions requires a considerable amount of time and resources. BlueCielo intends to support Windows operating systems during their Mainstream and Extended support phases. When an operating system enters the Self-Help support phase, it is no longer supported by BlueCielo. In that phase, it is not possible to get support from BlueCielo other than through the BlueCielo knowledge base.

Note    Changes in the Extended Support phase retirement date by Microsoft announced less than six months before the originally scheduled retirement date will not necessarily be followed by BlueCielo.

Support for Microsoft service packs is not addressed in this policy. For each version of BlueCielo software, specific service pack or additional requirements may apply depending on the version of Windows it is used with. These requirements are documented in the Release Notes document for each BlueCielo product version.

Unless otherwise specified, the listed operating systems are supported by BlueCielo products in this document with the following limitations:

• We recommend the 64-bit editions of Windows and Meridian be installed on the server computer, particularly if SQL Server or Oracle are installed on the same computer with Meridian (for demonstration or evaluation purposes only).
• Windows Server Core Edition is not supported unless noted in the following table.
• BlueCielo does not support any unlisted or Home edition of Windows as a valid business system.
• The workstation operating system variants are supported as server platforms only for demonstration and evaluation purposes. In a production environment, a server operating system must be used.
• The viewer is supported on 32-bit computers only. The Meridian 64-bit clients can be configured with AutoVue Client/Server. For more information, see the BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise Administrator's Guide.

• While BlueCielo does not perform quality assurance testing with all virtualization systems (even those listed below) or all combinations of host and guest operating systems, running Meridian Enterprise software on any server or desktop virtualization technology is supported under the following conditions.

  Virtualization technologies are designed to be transparent to the software that they host and not require any specific special effort from the software vendors for their use. Testing by BlueCielo has found that while this is largely true, systems deployed in a virtualized environment might have issues related to performance and communication with peripheral devices, other hardware components, networking, and security. BlueCielo will not take responsibility or provide support for such issues, unless it is proven that such issues are not caused by the use of virtualization software. Note that general comments, warnings and conditions associated with the use of virtualization applications are documented in our knowledgebase.

• Some third-party applications that are used for rendering are not compatible with all operating systems that BlueCielo Publisher is compatible with. When installed together with Meridian Explorer, we recommend that BlueCielo Publisher be installed on a dedicated computer running a version of Windows that is compatible with the third-party application and that Meridian Explorer be installed on a computer running Windows Server. For example, AutoCAD is not compatible with Windows Server. Therefore, we recommend that BlueCielo Publisher and AutoCAD be installed on a computer running a supported workstation operating system and that Meridian Explorer be installed on a separate computer running a supported server operating system.
• Meridian Enterprise full-text search uses the content indexing feature of the operating system and is subject to the same performance, capacity, and accuracy limitations.

Warning    Existing Meridian Enterprise vaults created on computers running older Windows versions (Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003) cannot be used by any version of Meridian Enterprise running on Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7. Such vaults require a special upgrade procedure as described in Vault incompatibility between Windows operating system versions in the Meridian knowledge base.

Supported operating systems

Operating System	Meridian Enterprise	Meridian Explorer	BlueCielo Publisher
Client (32-bit & 64-bit)
Windows 10
Windows 8.14
Windows 7 SP1
Windows Vista with SP2
iOS 9.3 and higher	5
iOS 6 and higher		2
Android 5.0 and higher	5
Universal Windows Platform 10.0 build 10240	5
Client & Server (64-bit only)
Windows Server 2016
Windows Server 2012 R24
Windows Server 2012 (incl. Core Edition)
Microsoft Hyper-V
VMware Workstation 1
VMware ESX Server