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Red Hat provides support and maintenance over stated time periods for the major versions of Red Hat Enterprise IPA (i.e. version 1) "Life Cycle". The Life Cycle allows customers and partners to effectively plan, deploy and support Red Hat Enterprise IPA.
The Life Cycle identifies the various levels of maintenance for each major release of Red Hat Enterprise IPA over a total period of five years from the initial release date, which is often referred to as the general availability date.
Software updates to Red Hat Enterprise IPA are delivered via errata advisories. Errata can be released individually on an as-needed basis or aggregated as a minor release (e.g. version 1.1). 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 IPA release(s).
The Red Hat Enterprise IPA 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 IPA is maintained and supported independently during the five year life cycle. For each major version of Red Hat Enterprise IPA, 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).
The five year life cycle for a major release of Red Hat Enterprise IPA is divided into two phases.
The following table details what type of software maintenance is performed during each phase of the five year life cycle:
| Life Cycle Phase | ||
|---|---|---|
| Description | Production 1 | Production 2 |
| Unlimited Incident Technical Support1 | Yes | Yes |
| Asynchronous Security Errata | Yes | Yes |
| Asynchronous Bug Fix Errata2 | Yes | Yes |
| Minor Releases | Yes | Yes |
| Software Enhancements | Yes3 | No |
| Updated install images | Yes | No |
If available, 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 is resolving defects of medium or higher priority.
Updated install images will be provided for minor releases during the Production 1 life cycle phase.
During the Production 2 phase, at a minimum, qualified security errata of important or critical impact and selected mission critical bug fixes may be released independent of minor releases.
No new functionality or updated installation images are planned for release in Production 2 life cycle phase. There are no minor releases planned during this phase.
| General Availability: | June 19, 2008 |
| End of Production 1 phase: | June 19, 2011 |
| End of Production 2 phase: | June 19, 2013 |
i. The Production 1 life cycle phase was formerly called the "Full Support" phase.
ii. The Production 2 life cycle phase was formerly called the "Maintenance" phase.