Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Life Cycle Policy (non-current versions)

Overview

Red Hat provides a published product life cycle for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (“OpenShift” or “OCP”), in order for customers and partners to effectively plan, deploy, and support their infrastructure. Red Hat publishes this life cycle in an effort to provide as much transparency as possible and may make exceptions from these policies as conflicts may arise.

All released errata will remain accessible to active subscribers across the entire life cycle.

This life cycle describes non-current major Red Hat OpenShift versions, for the life cycle pertaining to the latest release of OpenShift, please see the OpenShift Life Cycle page. For step-by-step instructions on how to migrate to Red Hat OpenShift 4, including tools and best practices, check out the Migration from OpenShift 3 to 4 documentation.

OpenShift Container Platform v3

This life cycle encompasses stated time periods OpenShift v3. The life cycle is split into production phases, each identifying the various levels of maintenance over a period of time from the initial release date. The production phases reference a major version of the product, though multiple minor (X.Y) versions of the product may be supported at the same time.

Life Cycle Phases

Full Support

Full support is provided according to the published Scope of Coverage and Service Level Agreement^[5&6]. Likewise, Development Support is provided according to the published Scope of Coverage and Service Level Agreement.

During the Full 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, all other available fix and qualified patches may be released via periodic updates. Customers are expected to upgrade their OpenShift environment to the most current supported version. On request, and at Red Hat’s discretion, qualified Critical Security errata advisories (RHSAs) and Critical Bug Fix errata advisories (RHBAs) may be made available to non-current minor versions.

Non-current releases within the full support phase which are no longer eligible for maintenance updates of any kind are marked as unmaintained. The following tables outlines the schedule for which minor versions of OpenShift v3 will no longer be eligible for maintenance updates:

v3.X End of Maintenance Schedule

Note: End of minor stream maintenance occurs at the end of the denoted months.

Maintenance Support

Maintenance support is provided according to the published Scope of Coverage and Service Level Agreement^[5&6]. Likewise, Development Support is provided according to the published Scope of Coverage and Service Level Agreement. During the maintenance phase, qualified security patches of Critical or Important severity, as well as select mission-critical bug-fix patches, will be released, if and when available.

No new software certifications or enhancements will be provided while the product is in this phase.

Extended Life Phase

The Extended Life Phase (ELP), is for customers who intend to use OpenShift beyond the post-retirement (Maintenance Support) period^[5&6]. Customers are required to maintain active subscriptions to continue receiving access to all previously released content, documentation, Kbase articles, as well as receive limited technical support. During this phase, there are no bug fixes, security fixes, new certifications, hardware enablement, feature enhancements, or root cause analysis available.

Historical GA/Phase End/EOL Dates

Layered and Dependant Components

Layered Offering On OpenShift

OpenShift Container Platform provides a variety of runtimes and application frameworks (provided directly from Red Hat) or our partners. All of the layered content or container offerings provided by Red Hat, our partners and/or third party providers maintain an independent lifecycle from OpenShift. As a result, it is important that you check with the content providers to see how that content is tested, certified and supported on the particular version of OpenShift you are running.

For Red Hat provided products or offerings we maintain this lifecycle and testing information in the following locations:

OpenShift Container Storage (OCS)

OpenShift Container Storage (OCS) 3.X which provides persistent storage for OpenShift Container Platform 3.X is supported until Jun 2022, to match the End-of-Maintenance Support of OCP 3.X. More information on the support for versions of OCS can be found in the OCS Interoperability Matrix.

Footnotes

1. Red Hat can choose to address critical or important bug fixes upon request, with significant business impact for the customer through a hot fix, as a temporary measure while the bug fix patch is being created.
2. The latest Major and Minor releases are the primary source for software enhancements. Roll-ups, updates, and patches are specifically reserved for bug fixes.
3. Latest security update information available at: https://access.redhat.com/site/security/updates/
4. OpenShift 3.x running on POWER 9 (in compatibility mode with POWER 8) follows the POWER 8 support scope.
5. Scope of coverage available at: https://access.redhat.com/support/offerings/production/soc/
6. Service level agreements available at: https://access.redhat.com/support/offerings/production/sla