RHEL In-place upgrade Support Policy

Updated -

Table of Contents

Overview

This document describes how Red Hat provides support for the In-place Upgrade Process, which allows Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems to be upgraded to next major version.

Details

Supported Upgrade paths

The Upgrade paths linked below are supported while the Red Hat Enterprise Linux version prior to In-place Upgrade process is in the Full Support Phase or in the corresponding Maintenance Support Phase (see note below for systems in Extended Life Phase). To learn more about when these phases are in effect, please reference the Life Cycle Dates section of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle policy:

  • For a list of Existing Upgrade paths that are currently supported, visit Supported in-place upgrade paths for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

  • All systems which are to be upgraded are required to have valid and tested backups in place prior to attempting the In-place Upgrade. These should be available and able to be reverted to if needed by Red Hat Support.

  • For additional technical limitations regarding the In-place Upgrade process, please refer to the Additional resources section below.

NOTE: In-Place Upgrades for an installation that is 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. For systems with Extended Life-cycle Support Add-On certain Red Hat defined Critical and Important security fixes and selected (at Red Hat discretion) urgent priority bug fixes and troubleshooting will be available.

How Red Hat Supports In-place Upgrade Process

The In-place Upgrade process adheres to the Service Level Agreement (SLA) of the RHEL subscription that is in use by the system prior to In-place Upgrade process. To learn more about the SLA that applies, please refer to the Production Support Terms of Service on the Red Hat Customer Portal.

  • In-Place Upgrades are recommended only in use-cases where Production is not currently impacted by any delays or difficulties encountered during the process. In the event that unknown factors result in troubleshooting requiring an indeterminate period of time and resumption of Production Services is delayed, the use of system backups is required prior to further troubleshooting efforts. As such, Severity level 3 and lower is presumed for any support engagement as defined in the Production Support Terms of Service.
  • Review of the entire pre-upgrade report is required, even when the report finds no inhibitors to the upgrade. The pre-upgrade report contains recommended actions to complete before the upgrade to ensure that the upgraded system functions correctly. The pre-upgrade report cannot simulate the entire in-place upgrade process and therefore cannot identify all inhibiting problems. As a result, in-place upgrade might still be terminated even after review and remediation of all problems in the report.
  • In case there is no feasible remediation to all problems found during pre-upgrade or upgrade steps, advice for recovery from backup and migrating via Clean install option may be provided.

For any additional Support needs above and beyond the scope defined above, please reach out to Red Hat Consulting to request additional assistance.

Additional resources

For additional usage information and known issues and limitations, please refer to the following sources:

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