ITIL 4 Foundation Practice Exam 2025 – All-in-One Guide to Master Your ITIL Certification!

When a service is retired, it means that it is permanently removed from active use and no longer available to users. This status indicates that the service has reached the end of its lifecycle and will not be replaced or updated.

Retirement of a service is a planned and deliberate process that often follows a period of notification to users and stakeholders, ensuring they are aware of the service discontinuation. During this phase, any necessary data migration, knowledge transfer, and decommissioning activities are carried out to ensure a smooth transition and mitigate impact on other services or operations.

This status contrasts with other stages in the service lifecycle. For example, when a service is being upgraded, it is still in operation but undergoing improvements, which is not the case in retirement. Similarly, being in the testing phase implies that the service is still being developed or evaluated, not retired. Lastly, if a service is still in production, it is ongoing and actively providing value, which is opposite to the permanent out of service nature of a retired service.