Red Hat Certificate System Errata-Support Policy
Overview
Red Hat has established fixed life cycles for Red Hat Certificate System that will allow customers and partners to plan their resources and implementations accordingly.
Red Hat Certificate System will be supported via errata service packs. These service packs will contain security, bug fix, and limited enhancement errata that have qualified on the appropriate Red Hat Certificate System release and architecture. Security errata will be released independent of the service packs.
Details
Red Hat will provide errata maintenance for Red Hat Certificate System for a period of five years from initial release (general availability). To encourage rapid adoption of new enterprise hardware and software yet retain the high stability inherit in Red Hat's enterprise products, the five-year period is divided into two phases of maintenance.
During the Full Support Phase, Red Hat defined Critical and Important Security errata advisories (RHSAs) and Urgent and Selected (at Red Hat discretion) High Priority Bug Fix errata advisories (RHBAs) will be released as they become available. Other errata advisories may be delivered as appropriate.
If available, new or improved hardware enablement and select enhanced software functionality may be provided at the discretion of Red Hat, generally in minor releases. Hardware enablement that does not require substantial software changes may be provided independent from minor releases at Red Hat's discretion.
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. The focus for minor releases during this phase lies on resolving defects of medium or higher priority.
Updated installation images will be provided for minor releases during the Full Support Phase.
Timeline
This table summarizes the two support phases after general availability (GA) of a major release.
Full Support
Start date: General availability
End date: Three years from general availability date
Description: During the Full Support phase, 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, such as Red Hat Enhancement Advisories (RHEAs), may be delivered as appropriate.
For any minor release made available during this phase, the available and qualified errata advisories (RHSAs, RHBAs, and RHEAs) will be cumulatively included with the contents of previously released product updates.
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.
Customers are required to upgrade to the most recent version of Red Hat Certificate System to get security and bug fixes.
Maintenance Support
Start date: Three years from general availability (end of full support)
End date: Two years from end of full support (five years from general availability)
Description: During the maintenance phase, only security errata and select mission-critical bug fixes will be released for Red Hat Certificate System.
Red Hat Certificate System 10
General availability: May 07, 2020
Full support (including hardware updates): May 07, 2020 – May 06, 2023
Maintenance support: May 05, 2023 – Aug 05, 2025
Extended update support: Aug 05, 2025 – Aug 05, 2027
Red Hat Certificate System 9
General availability: September 02, 2015
Full support (including hardware updates): September 02, 2015 – September 02, 2018
Maintenance support: September 02, 2018 – May 31, 2021
Red Hat Certificate System 8
General availability: July 22, 2009
Full support (including hardware updates): July 22, 2009 – July 21, 2014
Maintenance support: July 22, 2014 – July 03, 2017
Red Hat Certificate System 7.3
General availability: May 11, 2007
Full support (including hardware updates): May 11, 2007 – May 10, 2010
Maintenance support: May 11, 2010 – May 10, 2012
Red Hat Certificate System 7.2
General availability: Oct 30, 2006
Full support (including hardware updates): Oct 30, 2006 – Oct 29, 2009
Maintenance support: Oct 30, 2009 – Oct 29, 2011
