Red Hat Enterprise Linux Retired Life Cycle Dates
Table of Contents
Current support dates
Please see the Product Life Cycles
ELS
RHEL 5 ELS (ended November 30, 2020)
RHEL 6 ELS (ends June 30, 2024)
Extended Update Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, EUS was available for the following minor releases:
5.2 (ended March 31, 2010)
5.3 (ended November 30, 2010)
5.4 (ended July 31, 2011)
5.6 (ended July 31, 2013)
5.9 (ended March 31, 2015)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, EUS was available for the following minor releases:
6.0 (ended November 30, 2012)
6.1 (ended May 31, 2013)
6.2 (ended January 7, 2014)
6.3 (ended June 30, 2014)
6.4 (ended March 3, 2015)
6.5 (ended November 30, 2015)
6.6 (ended October 31, 2016)
6.7 (ended December 31, 2018)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, EUS was available for the following minor releases:
7.1 (ended March 31, 2017)
7.2 (ended November 30, 2017)
7.3 (ended November 30, 2018)
7.4 (ended August 31, 2019)
7.5 (ended April 30, 2020)
7.6 (ended May 31, 2021)
7.7 (ended August 30, 2021; Final RHEL 7 EUS Release)
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Update Services for SAP Solutions was available for the following minor releases:
7.2 (ended November 30, 2019)
7.3 (ended November 30, 2020)
7.4 (ended August 31, 2021)
7.6 (ended October 31, 2022)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 - (Non-EUS / Non-Update Services for SAP Solutions minor releases)
7.8 (retired September 30, 2020)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, EUS was available for the following minor releases:
8.1 (ended November 30, 2021)
8.2 (ended April 30, 2022)
8.4 (ended May 31, 2023)
8.6 (ends May 31, 2024)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 - (Non-EUS / Non-Update Services for SAP Solutions minor releases)
8.3 (retired May 31, 2021)
8.5 (retired May 31, 2022)
8.7 (retired May 31, 2023)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 - (Non-EUS / Non-Enhanced EUS / Non-Update Services for SAP Solutions minor releases)
9.1 (retired May 31, 2023)
Life-cycle Dates
| Version | General Availability | End of Full Support | End of Maintenance Support 1 | End of Maintenance Support 2 (Product retirement) | End of Extended Life-cycle Support | End of Extended Life Phase | Last Minor Release |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | October 23, 2003 | July 20, 2006 | June 30, 2007 | October 31, 2010 | January 30, 2014 | January 30, 2014 | |
| 4 | February 14, 2005 | March 31, 2009 | February 16, 2011 | February 29, 2012 | March 31, 2017 | May 18, 2022 | 4.9 |
| 5 | March 15, 2007 | January 8, 2013 | January 31, 2014 | March 31, 2017 | November 30, 2020 | Ongoing | 5.11 |
| 7 (System z (Structure A)) | April 10, 2018 | August 6, 2019 | August 6, 2020 | May 31, 2021 | Not Applicable | Ongoing | 7.6 |
| 7 (ARM) | November 13, 2017 | August 6, 2019 | August 6, 2020 | November 30, 2020 | Not Applicable | Ongoing | 7.6 |
| 7 (POWER9) | November 13, 2017 | August 6, 2019 | August 6, 2020 | May 31, 2021 | Not Applicable | Ongoing | 7.6 |
24 Comments
What are the life-cycle dates for RHEL 6.8, 6.9, and 6.10?
The Product Life Cycle checker would be good except the table appears to be out of date.
Richard, generally we encourage customers to stay at the latest minor version of their RHEL products. If you submit a support case against a non-current minor version (like RHEL 6.8), we will do our best to support you. However, if it looks like your problem is caused by an issue that has been fixed in a later minor version, we will ask you to update.
Thus, it is more appropriate to talk about life cycle dates for RHEL major versions instead of their minor versions. Please see our Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle document's Life-cycle Dates section for those.
The exception to what I wrote is for those using Extended Update Support (EUS). EUS is only available for RHEL versions still in the Full Support phase of their life cycle. RHEL 6 is now in the "Maintenance Support 2" phase, so one cannot get EUS for it.
Please see our Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle's Extended Update Support Add-on section for information about RHEL 7 and 8 EUS dates.
Hi Bernie...
Thanks for your time.
As a Red Hat support partner, we like to encourage our mutual customers to stay within the guidelines of the support strategy of the OS vendor. It would be nice to pop in a release - both major and minor - and find out if the release is at all still supported. It is easier to convince someone to move if there is an absolute end date, as opposed to the absence of a date.
Minor version information is important when requesting kernel z-stream backports when we identify bugs. We can derive end of life from the lifecycle pages, but it would be handy to be able to say definitively 'kernel x.y.z-1.2.3 does not qualify for z-stream." I know this is a moving target over time, but since Red Hat not only produces the kernels but sets the policies, having a way to pop in a kernel version and determine supportability quickly would be a great asset.
My 2cents.
Rick
Richard, thank you for your suggestion. I've passed it on to the Customer Portal labs team.
Really, though, a z-stream fix would only be applicable to the most current kernel or for a kernel in a RHEL minor version currently under Extended Update Support (EUS).
Our Red Hat Enterprise Linux Release Dates page provides the Linux kernel version we release with each minor version. So we can use it and the list of EUS dates to know what kernels should be eligible for z-stream fixes.
Taking RHEL 7 as an example, we see that RHEL 7.7 comes with kernel version 3.10.0-1062. So we know that version is eligible for z-stream fixes. From the EUS dates page, we see that EUS is currently available for RHEL 7.5 and 7.6. Those minor versions have kernel versions 3.10.0-862 & 3.10.0-957. So again, those versions are eligible for z-stream fixes.
Still, I understand where it would be simpler to just choose a kernel version from a drop-down box and have the Customer Portal output the answer. That is why I have forwarded your suggestion. Thanks again.
Hello Bernie,
I have exactly the same issue as Richard, when the end date for the minor versions is not officially listed, it makes room for interpretation and ambiguity which is not good. I am already on a 10th email and second call with an internal project which I am trying to convince that they need to upgrade to 6.10 in order to get full ELS coverage and it is proving very difficult without any official comm.
Could RH simply list the end dates for 6.8 and 6.9 here - thats all what is needed.
Thanks
Hello Vladimir,
I believe I understand where the confusion comes from. This article lists releases which have their EUS expired, but EUS was never available for RHEL-6.8 and RHEL-6.9 in the first place.
The maintenance for those releases (not EUS!) ended:
RHEL-6.8: 2017-03-21
RHEL-6.9: 2018-06-19
It should be no surprise that those dates are earlier than EUS of earlier releases ended.
Hello, Vladimir.
I see that Stepan already answered your question, but in hopes that this will help you with your obstinate internal project team members, let me also point you to:
Both of those explicitly call out the need to be on 6.10 (the last released RHEL 6 minor version) for Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS).
The fact that there are so many pages to chase via links , without one solid -- here is your matrix page is lame. This page doesn't even cover 5.11 release. It becomes a matter of compare what you found on this page with what you found on this page to piece together what you suspect if your coverage.
I 100% agree - it is very hard to track down the data on the website. I can only assume this may be intentional. As customers we need to translate into our own tables to summaries the fragmented info found on these pages for DOT release support status.
What are the life-cycle dates for RHEL 6.8, 6.9, and 6.10??
The only minor version currently supported (and the last) release of RHEL 6 is RHEL 6.10. The life cycle dates for the RHEL 6 major version apply, see Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle for details.
See also the comment above for a nice summary.
Is this information available in pdf by any chance?
Hello,
I read another article and it's appears this: 7.7 (ends August 30, 2021; Final RHEL 7 EUS Release) 7.8 (retired September 30, 2020)
If I anderstand, 7.8 haven't EUS version, 7.7 is the last EUS know, and after 30 august 2021 just 7.9 version have full support until 30 Jun 2024 ? (with ELS until 30 Jun 2026).
Thank you.
It looks to me that you have interpreted this article correctly. I just want to clarify that RHEL 7.9 is supported but will be getting maintenance based on the "Maintenace Support 2 Phase [1] criteria. That will continue until 30 June 2024 as you stated.
[1] https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata#Maintenance_Support_2_Phase
It should include RHEL 7.9.
RHEL 7.9 is still in maintenance, so it has not been added to this article, which focuses on out-of-maintenance offerings.
what does it mean when rhel 7.8 is already retired September, 30 2020 while the end of maintenance phase II for rhel 7 is June 30 2024.
RHEL 7.8 was retired from getting maintenance updates (e.g., bugs fixes and CVEs) when RHEL 7.9 was released on September 29, 2020. If you are on RHEL 7.8, we recommend you update to RHEL 7.9 that will continue to receive maintenance till the end of Maintenance Support 2, which will be on June 30, 2024.
What about the application of RHEL 7 security patches released by Redhat, on RHEL 7.8 servers in an existing fleet, during the phase II maintenance period until June 30, 2024? Are these RHEL 7 security patches released by Redhat addressable and compatible with an existing RHEL 7.8 server farm?
The security errata one finds in the
rhel-7-server-rpmsYUM repository that were released on or after 2020-09-29 (RHEL 7.9's release date) can be applied to a RHEL 7.8 machine.Yet, that will effectively make that machine a hybrid of RHEL 7.8 & 7.9. (For example, installing all security errata on your RHEL 7.8 machine would install RHSA-2021:3438. That would install a version 3.10.0-1160 kernel on your system. That is a RHEL 7.9 kernel. This would also be true of other, important packages, like the GNU C library [glibc].)
I do not encourage customers to apply selective updates. This is because when Red Hat releases an errata, our quality assurance team tests it on systems that have had all previous updates applied. (After all, it would be impossible to test a new errata package with every combination of every previously released package out of the thousands that come in the RHEL product.) Why put your production systems at risk using not-tested-together packages in a mishmash of RHEL 7.8/7.9 packages? Just update all packages so you are using latest, bringing you up to a complete RHEL 7.9 system.
With that said, I must admit that Red Hat supports installing select errata from one minor version (RHEL 7.9) on a different minor version (RHEL 7.8). Please see Can I install packages from different versions of RHEL?. Yet, please remember that while something may be possible and even supported, it is not advisable.
RHEL 7.7 is lacking as EUS release in the overview.
Where is the full RHEL 7 (including RHEL 7.9) support documented? I believe it leaves Maint Phase 2 some time after April 2024, but need to know more specifically. Thanks.
Confirmed June 30th 2024 is when asynchronous patching/security updates will end. Got better understanding of EUS as well. Helpful documentation, just not all in one place.
This page is not being updated with new information ie. later revs of RHEL6 for instance. First comment below, "What are the life-cycle dates for RHEL 6.8, 6.9, and 6.10?"