Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Life Cycle Policy
Contents
Overview
Red Hat provides a published product life cycle for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (“OpenShift” or “OCP”), in order for customers and partners to effectively plan, deploy, and support their infrastructure. Red Hat publishes this life cycle in an effort to provide as much transparency as possible and may make exceptions from these policies as conflicts may arise.
Red Hat OpenShift container platform v4 provides a time-delineated, phased life cycle, where in at least 4 minor versions can be supported at any time. The time period of support is fixed from the point of minor version release and offers varying levels of support and maintenance. Red Hat aims to forecast releases at a 4 month cadence, providing customers ample opportunity to plan.
All released errata will remain accessible to active subscribers across the entire life cycle.
Life Cycle Phases
Full Support
This phase begins at the GA/release of the minor version and ends after a 6 month period OR 90 days after the GA of the superseding minor release, whichever is later.
Full support is provided according to the published Scope of Coverage and Service Level Agreement. Likewise, Development Support is provided according to the published Scope of Coverage and Service Level Agreement.
During the Full Support Phase, qualified Critical and Important Security Advisories (RHSAs) will be released as they become available. Urgent and Selected High Priority Bug Fix Advisories (RHBAs) will be released as they become available; all other available fix and qualified patches may be released via periodic updates. In order to receive security and bug fixes, customers are expected to upgrade their OpenShift environment to the most current supported micro (4.x.z) version.
Maintenance Support
For OpenShift 4.12 releases and newer
This phase commences after the Full Support phase for the respective minor version and ends at 18 months after GA.
During the Maintenance Support phase, qualified Critical and Important Security Advisories (RHSAs) will be released as they become available. Urgent and Selected High Priority Bug Fix Advisories (RHBAs) may be released as they become available. Other Bug Fix (and Enhancement (RHEA) Advisories may be released at Red Hat’s discretion, but should not be expected.
For OpenShift releases 4.7 to 4.11, inclusive
This phase commences after the Full Support phase for the respective GA and has a duration of 12 months. For instances where the full support phase for the version is beyond 6 months, the duration of the maintenance phase is reduced so the accumulated Full and Maintenance support phases for a release are 18 months.
During the Maintenance Support phase, qualified Critical and Important Security Advisories (RHSAs) will be released as they become available. Urgent and Selected High Priority Bug Fix Advisories (RHBAs) may be released as they become available. Other Bug Fix and Enhancement (RHEA) Advisories may be released at Red Hat’s discretion, but should not be expected.
At the end of the maintenance support phase, software and documentation will continue to be available to customers however no technical support will be provided except assistance to upgrade to a supported version. Full functionality of an OpenShift cluster(s) may require access to hosted services provided by Red Hat, the availability of these services cannot be guaranteed for unmaintained and unsupported versions of OpenShift.
Extended Update Support
Commencing with OpenShift Container Platform 4.8, Red Hat will denote all even numbered minor releases (eg 4.8, 4.10, 4.12) as Extended Update Support (EUS) releases.
For an EUS release, the aforementioned Full and Maintenance support phases are applied with the same conditions to trigger the start and end date for each phase of a release. OpenShift Container Platform EUS releases provides an easier upgrade between EUS releases, permitting them to streamline upgrades of worker nodes and formulate upgrade strategies of EUS to EUS OpenShift releases that will cause less reboots of nodes.
Commencing with OpenShift Container Platform 4.12 (footnote [13]), Red Hat will additionally include a six month Extended Update Support (EUS) phase for all EUS releases. The EUS phase will follow the maintenance phase for the given release.
Support through the Extended Update Support (EUS) phase is an optional offering for Red Hat OpenShift subscribers. With EUS, Red Hat provides backports of Critical and Important impact security updates and urgent-priority bug fixes for a predefined set of minor releases of Red Hat OpenShift. EUS enables customers to remain with the same minor release of Red Hat OpenShift for a total 24 months, allowing for stable production environments for mission-critical applications.
EUS is provided with x86-64 versions of Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes Engine, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, and Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus Premium subscriptions. It is also available as an Add-on to x86-64 versions of Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes Engine, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, and Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus Standard subscriptions. As from OpenShift Container Platform 4.14, EUS is also available across the Power, Arm and Z variants.
Extended Update Support Term 2
Commencing with OpenShift Container Platform 4.14, Red Hat will provide twelve months of an additional Extended Update Support, denoted Additional EUS Term 2, which commences at the end of the Extended Update Support phase for EUS releases.
Support through the Additional EUS Term 2 phase is an optional Add-On subscription available to Red Hat OpenShift customers. With Additional EUS Term 2, Red Hat provides backports of Critical and Important impact security updates and urgent-priority bug fixes for platform-aligned Operators included in OpenShift Kubernetes Engine, as well as select OpenShift Container Platform or OpenShift Platform Plus Operators denoted on the Operator Life Cycle page. Additional EUS Term 2 enables customers to remain with the same minor release of Red Hat OpenShift for a total of 36 months, allowing for stable production environments for mission-critical applications. As from the 4.14 release, Additional EUS Term 2 is available on all architecture variants of OpenShift Container Platform.
Please contact your Red Hat Sales Representative if you are unsure if you have access to EUS or EUS Term 2, and to help decide if it is appropriate for your environment.
Extended Life Phase
Applicable only for the 4.8 release
During the Extended Life Phase, an OpenShift Container Platform subscription provides continued access to previously released content on the Red Hat Customer Portal, as well as other content such as documentation and the Red Hat Knowledgebase.
For versions of products in the Extended Life Phase, Red Hat will provide limited ongoing technical support. No bug fixes, security fixes, hardware enablement or root-cause analysis will be available during this phase, and support will be provided on existing installations only.
Red Hat reserves the right to terminate the ongoing support in the Extended Life Phase for a particular version of OpenShift Container Platform at any time.
Life Cycle Dates
See footnote [9] for further information on 4.6 EUS end date and footnote [10] for further EUS information.
Layered and Dependant Components
RHEL CoreOS
RHEL CoreOS is a component of OpenShift 4 and is maintained per the OpenShift life cycle. Each release of OpenShift includes a corresponding stream of RHEL CoreOS.[8]
Layered Offering On OpenShift
OpenShift Container Platform provides a variety of runtimes and application frameworks (provided directly from Red Hat) or our partners. All of the layered content or container offerings provided by Red Hat, our partners and/or third party providers maintain an independent lifecycle from OpenShift. As a result, it is important that you check with the content providers to see how that content is tested, certified and supported on the particular version of OpenShift you are running.
For Red Hat provided products or offerings we maintain this lifecycle and testing information in the following locations:
| Software Classification | Provided Tools/Functionality | Life Cycle / Tested Configuration Links |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat OpenShift Operators | - | https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/openshift_operators |
| Red Hat Software Collections | PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, node.JS, Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB | https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/rhscl |
| JBoss Products Add-ons | EAP, EWS/JWS, Fuse, AMQ, BRMS, Data Grid | https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/jboss_notes and https://access.redhat.com/articles/5115291 |
Footnotes
- Red Hat can choose to address critical or important bug fixes upon request, with significant business impact for the customer through a hot fix, as a temporary measure while the bug fix patch is being created.
- The latest Major and Minor releases are the primary source for software enhancements. Roll-ups, updates, and patches are specifically reserved for bug fixes.
- Latest security update information available at: https://access.redhat.com/site/security/updates/
- Red Hat provides Critical impact security fixes and selected urgent-priority bug fixes, if and when available.
- Scope of coverage available at: https://access.redhat.com/support/offerings/production/soc/
- Service level agreements available at: https://access.redhat.com/support/offerings/production/sla
- Availability limited to specific architectures.
- RHEL CoreOS version information available on the Tested Configurations Matrix: https://access.redhat.com/articles/4128421
- In order to provide additional overlap with the superseding OpenShift EUS release, OpenShift 4.6 EUS end date is extended to Oct 27, 2022
- Historical EUS life cycle information is available on the Extended Update Support (EUS) Overview page
- Technology Preview: https://access.redhat.com/support/offerings/techpreview
- Third-Party Support: https://access.redhat.com/third-party-software-support
- OCP 4.12 Extended Update Support additional 6 months is x86-64 only. As from OCP 4.14, additional 6 months applies across all supported architectures.
