Red Hat Ceph Storage Life Cycle
Overview
Red Hat Ceph Storage provides software-defined storage architecture that is highly scalable and can be integrated with both cloud and virtualization applications and legacy infrastructure.
Red Hat offers services for each major release of Red Hat Ceph Storage:
- Inktank Ceph Enterprise 1.1 offered with 18 months of Production Support
- Red Hat Ceph Storage 1.2 offered with 18 months (extended to 22 months) of Production Support
- Red Hat Ceph Storage 1.3 offered with 36 months of Production Support
- Red Hat Ceph Storage 2 offered with 36 months (extended to 40 months) of Production Support and 24 months of optional ELS
- Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 offered with 36 months (extended to 38 months) of Production Support and 24 months (extended to 28 months) of optional ELS
- Red Hat Ceph Storage 4 offered with 36 months (extended to 38 months) of Production Support and 24 months (extended to 25 months) of optional ELS
- Red Hat Ceph Storage 5 offered with 36 months of Production Support and 24 months (extended to 35 months) of optional ELS
- Red Hat Ceph Storage 6 offered with 36 months of Production Support and 24 months of optional ELS
- Red Hat Ceph Storage 7 offered with 36 months of Production Support
Details
Software changes to Red Hat Ceph Storage are delivered through individual updates known as errata advisories. These advisories are delivered through the Red Hat Customer Portal or other authorized portals. Errata advisories can be released individually on an as-needed basis or aggregated as a minor release. Errata advisories may contain security fixes (Red Hat Security Advisories or RHSAs), bug fixes (Red Hat Bug Fix Advisories or RHBAs), or feature enhancements (Red Hat Enhancement Advisories or RHEAs). All errata advisories are tested and qualified against the respective, active Red Hat Ceph Storage major release.
All released errata advisories remain accessible to active subscribers for the entire Red Hat Ceph Storage life cycle. Within each major release of Red Hat Ceph Storage, any errata advisory (including one released as part of a minor release) will be applied cumulatively to the latest release of Red Hat Ceph Storage, including any patch sets.
During the life cycle of a major release, Red Hat makes commercially reasonable efforts to maintain binary compatibility for the core runtime environment across all minor releases and errata advisories. If necessary, Red Hat may make exceptions to this compatibility goal for Critical impact security or other significant issues.
The following table details the subscription services, including support and software maintenance, performed during each phase of the Red Hat Ceph Storage life cycle:
| Description | Production Phase |
|---|---|
| Access to previously released content through the Red Hat Customer Portal | Yes |
| Self help through the Red Hat Customer Portal | Yes |
| Technical Support1 | Unlimited |
| Asynchronous Security Errata (RHSA) | Yes |
| Asynchronous Bug Fix Errata (RHBA)2 | Yes |
1. Technical Support depends on the service level included in your Red Hat Ceph Storage subscription agreement.
2. Red Hat may choose, as a temporary measure, to address catastrophic issues with a significant customer business impact with a hotfix while the Red Hat Bug Fix Advisory (RHBA) is being created.
Production Support
Full Support (1 year)
- Qualified Critical and Important Security Advisories (RHSAs) and Urgent and selected High Priority Bug Fix Advisories (RHBAs) will be released as they become available. Other errata advisories may be delivered as appropriate
- If applicable, select enhanced software functionality may be provided at the discretion of Red Hat
- Minor releases will also include available and qualified errata advisories (RHSAs, RHBAs, and RHEAs). Minor releases are cumulative and include the contents of previously released updates.
Additionally, and only during this phase:
- Customers and Partners have the ability to request new features which are introduced upstream to be selectively backported, pending the review of Red Hat Product Management and Engineering, until the end of this phase
- The installer components may be updated until the end of this phase
The end of Full Support is announced with the last point release in this phase, at the time of release and no sooner.
Maintenance Support (2 years)
- Qualified Critical and Important Security Advisories (RHSAs) and Urgent and selected High Priority Bug Fix Advisories (RHBAs) will be released as they become available. Other errata advisories may be delivered as appropriate
Extended Life Support (ELS) (2 years)(Add-on lifecycle extension purchased separately)
- Same as maintenance support but limited to Bug Fix Erratas and RHSAs only are available upon customer request. This is valid for existing environments only, it cannot be applied to new installations or in combination with technologies that have not been certified with the version of the product as they were at the end of Maintenance Support. Expansions of clusters and node removals are supported as long as you do not exceed the capacity or node count of your purchased SKU. ELS support for RHCS is provided on the major version for which ELS is purchased for. Bug fixes Erratas and RHSAs will only be provided on the latest dot release of that major version, but technical support will be provided on any dot or z stream release of that major. Contact your Red Hat account representative for inquiries and to purchase the extended support add-on.
| Red Hat Ceph Storage Release | Version covered for Errata and RHSA |
|---|---|
| Red Hat Ceph Storage 2 | 2.5 |
| Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 | 3.3 |
| Red Hat Ceph Storage 4 | 4.3 |
Red Hat Ceph Storage Upgrade Policy
Red Hat will provide a supported upgrade path between major releases of Red Hat Ceph Storage. Please refer to the product documentation for install or upgrade procedures.
Red Hat does not support updating alpha, beta, release-candidate, or other pre-release builds into production environments. If this is desired, Red Hat's consulting team may be able to assist with a manual transition.
The upgrade process will support upgrading between consecutive minor releases. Customers are advised to deploy the latest available point release at their earliest convenience.
For example, the process would support upgrading from Red Hat Ceph Storage 1 to Red Hat Ceph Storage 2, but upgrading from Red Hat Ceph Storage 1 to Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 is not supported.
Life Cycle Dates
NOTE: Red Hat Ceph Storage does not offer an Extended Update lifecycle, and customers are to upgrade promptly when new point releases are issued. The underlying RHEL operating system is supported in regular and EUS lifecycles (https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata), starting with 8.2 EUS — see section https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata#Extended_Update_Support for details.
