Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle

[redman]

Scientific Linux is based on the sources from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Therefor, it is good to know how long Red Hat will support each version of RHEL. Because as long as they support a version, it can be assumed the SL team will be able to support it too.

Red hat has on their website a page with their Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle.

It contains the following information:


Life Cycle Dates

RHEL-3:
General Availability: October 23, 2003
End of production 1: July 20, 2006
End of production 2: June 30, 2007
End of production 3/end of regular life cycle: October 31, 2010
End of extended life cycle: October 31, 2013

RHEL-4:
General Availability: February 14, 2005
End of production 1: March 31, 2009
End of production 2: Q1 of 2011
End of production 3/end of regular life cycle: February 29, 2012
End of extended life cycle: February 28, 2015

RHEL-5:
General Availability: March 15, 2007
End of production 1: Q4 of 2011
End of production 2: Q4 of 2012
End of production 3/end of regular life cycle: March 31, 2014
End of extended life cycle: March 31, 2017

RHEL-6:
General Availability: November 10, 2010
End of production 1: Q4 of 2014
End of production 2: Q4 of 2015
End of production 3/end of regular life cycle: November 30, 2017
End of extended life cycle: November 30, 2020

Or, as a single image (sized for printing):



Life Cycle Phases

Production 1 Phase:
During the Production 1 phase, at a minimum, qualified security Errata Advisories of important, critical impact and urgent priority bug-fix errata may be released as they become available.

If available, new or improved hardware support and select enhanced software functionality may be provided at the discretion of Red Hat, generally via Service Packs. Hardware support that does not require substantial software changes may be provided independent from Service Packs at the discretion of Red Hat.

Service Packs will also include available and qualified Errata Advisories. Service Packs are cumulative thus including the contents of previously released updates. The focus for Service Packs during this phase lies on resolving defects of medium or higher priority.

Updated install images will be provided for Service Packs during the Production 1 phase.

Production 2 Phase:
During the Production 2 phase, at a minimum, qualified security Errata Advisories of important, critical or urgent priority bug-fix errata may be released as they become available.

If available, refreshed hardware support that does not require substantial software changes may be provided at the discretion of Red Hat, generally via Service Packs. New software functionality is not available during this phase.

Service Packs will also include all available and qualified errata. Service Packs are cumulative thus including the contents of previously released updates, including those from Production 1 phase. The focus for Service Packs during this phase lies on resolving defects with a minimum priority of high.

Updated install images will only be provided for Service Packs during the Production 2 phase if required due to installer changes at Red Hat's discretion.

Production 3 Phase:
During the Production 3 phase, at a minimum, qualified security Errata Advisories of critical impact, as well as, selected urgent priority bug-fix errata may be released as they become available.

No new functionality, new hardware support or updated installation images are planned for release in Production 3 phase. There are no Service Packs planned during this phase.

Extended Life Cycle Phase:
During the Extended Life Cycle Phase, active subscribers continue to receive access to previously released content on RHN as well as other content such as documentation and the Red Hat Knowledge Base through the Red Hat customer portal.

As an optional add-oniv to a regular Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, Red Hat offers Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS) Subscriptions.

ELS provides critical impact security fixes and selected urgent priority defect fixes that are available and qualified for a subset of the packages in a specific major releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux beyond the end of its regular 7-year life cycle. For ELS subscribers, Red Hat will generally continue to provide the critical impact security fixes independent of customer requests.

The individual ELS streams will be maintained for an additional 3 years after the end-date of the Regular Life Cycle of the relevant release (extending the Life Cycle to 10 years). ELS is provided for a limited set of software packages on a limited number of hardware architectures.

Or, as a single image (sized for printing):

[tux99]

RH today has extended the regular lifecycle to 10 years for EL5 and EL6:
http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2012/1/red-hat-enterprise-linux-stability-drives-demand-for-more-flexibility-in-long-term-operating-system-deployments