RHEL Support Changes

[Terry L Johnson]

My customer went with RHEL becuase of a 5-7 yr support commitment, Now they have changed the support to the current + 1 back. if you want an 18 month support of a 'minor' release they charge a lot more. unfortunaletly in a mission-critical env. we can't change to a new kernel at the drop of a hat.

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi,

That statement seems to be rather different to what's published here:

http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/errata

Cheers,

Rob

[Terry L Johnson]

actually if you read the statement it refers to MAJOR releases. The major release is 5
Since they maintain that each minor kernel...ie 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 is kernel binary compatible they will support the current minor 5.4 and 1 kernel back 5.3 for kernel pathes.ie
For each major version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, "any errata will only be applied incrementally to the previously released errata."
During phase 1 they MAY release CRITICAL security patches or bug fixes "Critical" being defined as a down production system

For an explanation of the 18-month EUS support please reference: http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid39_gci1343202,00.html

[Terry L Johnson]

If we want actual bug fixes to a minor release within a major release
for 18 months we have to purchase EUS support
beyond that we have to purchase a RedHat Consultant to "one-off" the OS. This consultant is full-time. They maintain that the kernel is the same through the major cycle with no impact to the 1500 rpms on distro or app. 5 million lines of various client code

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

In fact, I don't see any changes here.
AFAIK, in the past they didn't promise any support for minor releases.