Red Hat Announces Extended Lifecycle Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4

Today, Red Hat announced the availability of Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS) for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, in line with the one-year notification of the end-of-life of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, which is scheduled to occur on February 29, 2012. ELS, an optional Add-On for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, extends an existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription for an additional three years over its standard seven year life-cycle. As a result, subscription customers have a choice of purchasing ELS to extend their use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, or to upgrade to a more recent Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 or 6 version.

ELS is suitable for customers who do not wish to upgrade to a newer version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, perhaps because their systems and applications are still running well and do not warrant upgrading, or maybe because of contractual requirements. An important use for ELS will be in virtualized environments. One way to enable an older, stable system to run on modern hardware is to virtualize it. The virtualization software supports the modern hardware and is able to host the older system. With ELS, the older system has an even longer supported lifecycle while taking advantage of the latest hardware.

To learn more about ELS, visit here.