Red Hat HPC Solution Life Cycle

Red Hat provides support and software maintenance over stated time periods for the major versions of the Red Hat HPC Solution (starting with version 5). This is called the "life cycle". The life cycle lets customers and partners plan, deploy, and support the Red Hat HPC Solution effectively.

The start and end dates of the life cycle of each major version of the Red Hat HPC Solution will match those of the Production 1 life-cycle phase of the corresponding version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux that is embedded with the Red Hat HPC Solution. For example, the start and end dates of the life cycle of Red Hat HPC Solution version 5 will match the same dates as the Production 1 life cycle phase for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5:

Start date: March 15, 2007

End date: March 31, 2011

Note: Because Red Hat HPC Solution version 5 is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 5, it will have a life cycle of 2.5 years from the initial release of Red Hat HPC Solution version 5, and it will end on March 31, 2011.

Software updates to the Red Hat HPC Solution are delivered via errata advisories. Errata can be released individually according to need or aggregated as a minor release synchronized with a minor release of the underlying version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Errata may contain security and bug fixes, as well as improved features. All errata are tested and qualified against the appropriate Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases. For each major version of the underlying Red Hat Enterprise Linux, any errata for the Red Hat HPC Solution will only be applied incrementally to the previously released errata and may require the current level of errata for the underlying Enterprise Linux to be applied.

During the life cycle of the Red Hat HPC Solution, Red Hat will release, at a minimum, qualified security errata of Important and Critical impact, as well as urgent bug-fix errata, independently of minor releases.

Over the life cycle of Red Hat HPC Solution, the amount of software updates released will decline. Furthermore, Red Hat's commitment to provide binary runtime compatibility does not extend to the Red Hat HPC Solution cluster middleware.

New versions of the Red Hat HPC Solution may be limited to newer major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, independent of the support status of older versions of the HPC Solution on earlier major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Customers with active subscriptions to the Red Hat HPC Solution will have access to future versions as they become available.