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Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle

Overview

Red Hat provides support and maintenance over stated time periods for the major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) (i.e. versions 3, 4, or 5) "Life Cycle". The Life Cycle allows customers and partners to effectively plan, deploy and support Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The RHEL Life Cycle identifies the various levels of maintenance for each major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux over a total period of ten years from the initial release date, which is often referred to as the general availability date.

Software updates to Red Hat Enterprise Linux are delivered via errata advisories. Errata can be released individually on an as-needed basis or aggregated as a minor release (e.g. version 5.2, sometimes also referred to as a "Service Pack"). Errata may contain security and bug fixes, as well as feature enhancements. All errata are thoroughly tested and qualified against the appropriate Red Hat Enterprise Linux release(s).

The RHEL Life Cycle is designed to reduce the level of change within each major release over time increasing predictability and decreasing maintenance costs. All released errata will remain accessible to active subscribers for the entire Life Cycle. Red Hat published this Life Cycle in an effort to provide as much transparency as possibly and may make exceptions from these policies as conflicts may arise.

Every major version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is maintained and supported independently during the ten year life cycle. For each major version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, any errata will only be applied incrementally to the previously released errata.

During the entire Life Cycle, Red Hat makes commercially reasonable efforts to maintain binary compatibility for the core runtime environment across all minor releases and asynchronous errata (possible exceptions include critical security issues). Furthermore, major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux contain a limited set of backward-compatible libraries from the previous major versions to aid with the migration of applications from one major release to another.


* This is a schematic view of the Life Cycle, time-spans and dates within the 7 year life cycle are subject to adjustment.

Details

The life cycle for a major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a total length of ten years. It consists of a regular life cycle of seven years plus an optional extension of three years and is divided into four individual life cycle phases.


The following table details what type of software maintenance is performed during each phase of the ten year life cycle:

Life Cycle Phase
Description Production 1 Production 2 Production 3
Unlimited Incident Technical Support1 Yes Yes Yes
Asynchronous Security Errata Yes Yes Yes
Asynchronous Bug Fix Errata2 Yes Yes Yes
Minor Releases Yes Yes No
Refreshed Hardware Enablement3 Native Limited4 Native Through Virtualization
Software Enhancements Yes5 No No
Updated install images Yes No No
  1. Full details of Support Services are provided as part of the Subscription Agreement.
  2. Red Hat can choose to address catastrophic issues with significant business impact for the customer through a Hotfix as a temporary measure while the bugfix errata is being created.
  3. Native hardware enablement is provided by backporting hardware drivers, etc. Hardware enablement through virtualization is achieved by running a prior version of Enterprise Linux as a virtual guest on a newer version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. See below for details (Virtualization).
  4. Limited to hardware that does not require substantial software changes, see text for details (Production 2).
  5. Major releases are the primary vehicle for software enhancements.

Production 1 Life Cycle Phasei:

During Production 1, at a minimum, qualified security errata of important and critical impact, as well as, urgent priority bug-fix errata may be released independent of minor releases.

If available, refreshed hardware enablement and select enhanced software functionality may be provided at the discretion of Red Hat, generally via minor releases. Minor releases will also include all available and qualified errata. The focus for minor releases during this life cycle phase lies on resolving defects of medium or higher priority with increasingly strict inclusion criteria.

Updated install images will be provided for minor releases during the Production 1 life cycle phase.

Production 2 Life Cycle Phaseii:

During the Production 2 life cycle phase, at a minimum, qualified security errata of important or critical impact, as well as, urgent priority bug-fix errata may be released independent of minor releases.

If available, refreshed hardware enablement that does not require substantial software changes may be provided at the discretion of Red Hat via minor releases. New software functionality is not available during this phase. All available and qualified errata will be provided via the minor releases. The focus for minor releases during this life cycle phase lies on resolving defects with a minimum priority of high.

Updated install images will only be provided for minor releases during the Production 2 life cycle phase if required due to installer changes at Red Hat's discretion.

Production 3 Life Cycle Phaseiii:

During Production 3, at a minimum, qualified security errata of important or critical impact and selected mission critical bug fixes may be released as they become available.

No new functionality, new hardware enablement or updated installation images are planned for release in Production 3 life cycle phase. There are no minor releases planned during this phase.

Extended Life Cycle Phase:

As an optional add-on subscriptioniv to a regular Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, Red Hat offers Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS). ELS provides critical impact security fixes and selected urgent priority defect fixes that are available and qualified for a subset of the packages in a specific major releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux beyond the end of it's regular 7-year life cycle. The individual ELS streams will be maintained for an additional 3 years immediately after the end-date of the regular life cycle of the relevant release (extending the potential life cycle to 10 years). ELS is limited to specific hardware architectures.

Virtualization

Red Hat intends to support versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, that are still within their seven year life cycle, running as virtualized guests on later versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. However to qualify as supported, Red Hat may require that both the guest and host versions have the latest available errata applied. Each version of RHEL under Extended Life Cycle Support will be supported as a guest on host versions, supported during its regular life cycle of 7 years.

Hardware certification (including the associated hardware limits) is based on the version of Enterprise Linux that is being used as the host. Red Hat, at its discretion, may provide additional optimization for specific virtualization scenarios (such as para-virtualized drivers).

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualization support matrix provides details on the supported combinations of operating systems, versions, and hardware architectures.

Life Cycle Dates



General Availability: October 23, 2003
End of Production 1 phase: July 20, 2006
End of Production 2 phase: June 30, 2007
End of Production 3 phase: October 31, 2010
End of Extended Life Cycle phase: October 31, 2013


General Availability: February 14, 2005
End of Production 1 phase: March 31, 2009
End of Production 2 phase: Q4 of 2010
End of Production 3 phase: February 29, 2012
End of Extended Life Cycle phase: February 28, 2015


General Availability: March 14, 2007
End of Production 1 phase: Q4 of 2011
End of Production 2 phase: Q4 of 2012
End of Production 3 phase: March 31, 2014
End of Extended Life Cycle phase: March 31, 2017

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 release notes

Server: Client:

i. The Production1 life cycle phase was formerly called the "Full Support" phase.
ii. The Production 2 life cycle phase was formerly called the "Deployment" or "Transition" phase.
iii. The Production 3 life cycle phase was formerly called the "Maintenance" phase.
iv. For details on the ELS add-on subscriptions please refer to http://www.redhat.com/server/extended_lifecycle_support