Red Hat Ansible Inside Life Cycle
Overview
As part of a Red Hat Ansible Inside subscription, customers have access to supported versions of on-premise packages, as well as Execution Environment images downloadable from registry.redhat.io. Red Hat provides a published product life cycle for Ansible Inside so that partners can properly plan, deploy, support, and maintain their on-premise use of Ansible Inside.
This life cycle encompasses stated time periods for each version of Ansible Inside, which is a logical grouping of many individual product components. The life cycle for each version of Ansible Inside is split into production phases, each identifying the various levels of maintenance over a period of time from the initial release date. While multiple versions of Ansible Inside may be supported at any one time, note that this life cycle applies to each specific version of Ansible Inside and does not apply to (for example) the 1.x or 2.x major version as a whole. That is, semantic versioning rules are not used as part of Ansible Inside releases (but specific contained components may).
Partners are expected to upgrade their embedded Ansible Inside environments to the most current supported version of the product in a timely fashion. Features and bug fixes target only the latest versions of the product, though some allowance may be given for high security risk items.
Ansible Inside packages and versions
| Ansible Inside Version | Execution Environments1 | Ansible Navigator version2 | Ansible Builder version2 | RHEL Version | OCP Supported |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.2 | core 2.15, ee-minimal, ee-supported, ee-2.9* | 3.4 | 3.0 | 8.6+, 9.0+ | 4.10-4.16 |
| 1.1 | core 2.14, ee-minimal, ee-supported, ee-2.9* | 2.2.0 | 1.2.0 | 8.4+, 9.0+ | 4.9-4.12 |
| 0.9 | core 2.13, ee-minimal, ee-supported, ee-2.9* | 2.1.0 | 1.1.1 | 8.4+, 9.0+ | 4.8-4.11 |
*The following supported execution environments include versions of Ansible Core RPMs available separately in the Red Hat Customer Portal.
1. This is both the minimum version of Ansible-core required to install AAP, and also the version of Ansible-core shipped inside the control plane execution environment. It is not recommended or supported to modify the control plane execution environment.
2. Minimum versions: This is the component version available when that release of AAP was made generally available. The underlying component version is likely to change as the lifecycle of AAP goes on. Updating underlying component versions will not change the version of AAP you are running. For more information this, please refer to the following blog: Bringing faster updates to Ansible Automation Platform.
Ansible Automation Platform requires at minimum Python 3.8 to function as designed.
Life Cycle Dates
Ansible Inside Life Cycle
Scope of Coverage
Support will be provided for use according to the published Scope of Coverage in Appendix 1 of the Red Hat Enterprise Agreement.
To encourage the rapid adoption of new technologies while keeping the high standard of stability inherent in Red Hat enterprise product, the product life cycle for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is divided into three phases of maintenance, described below.
Production Phases
| Life Cycle Phase | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Description | Full Support | Maintenance Support 1 | Maintenance Support 2 |
| Qualified critical security fixes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Bug fixes by severity 1 | Critical and important severity issues | Critical severity issues | None |
| Asynchronous Security Errata (RHSA) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Asynchronous Bug Fix Errata (RHBA)2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Select Software Enhancements | Yes | No | No |
1. Technical Support depends on the service level included in your Red Hat Ansible Inside subscription agreement.
2. Red Hat may choose, as an intermediate measure, to address serious issues that have an important impact to customer business with a hotfix while a Red Hat Bug Fix Advisory is created and verified.
Full Support Phase
During the Full Support Phase, qualified Critical and Important Security Advisories (RHSAs) and Urgent and selected High Priority Bug Fix Advisories (RHBAs) may be released as they become available. Other errata advisories, such as Red Hat Enhancement Advisories (RHEAs), may be delivered as appropriate.
Maintenance Support 1 Phase
During the Maintenance Support phase, qualified Critical and Important Security errata advisories (RHSAs) and Urgent and Selected High Priority Bug Fix errata advisories (RHBAs) may be released as they become available. Other bug fix (RHBA) and enhancement (RHEA) errata advisories may be released at Red Hat’s discretion, but should not be expected.
Maintenance Support 2 Phase
During the Maintenance Support 2, qualified Critical and Important Security errata advisories (RHSAs) will be issued and Urgent and Selected High Priority Bug Fix errata advisories (RHBAs) will likely not be delivered. Ansible Automation Platform releases in Maintenance Support 2 will be technically supported, however, software updates will likely not be provided for these releases.
Supporting Software
If supporting software (for example, PostgreSQL embedded database or the underlying operating system and/or deployment platform) has ended its product life cycle before the end of the Maintenance Support Phase, customers may be required to upgrade to the most recent version of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform running on a supported component.
