Red Hat Enterprise Linux support policy (EOL dates)Edit

Created , updated

This page at Red Hat outlines their support policy for their Red Hat Enterprise Linux products.

In short:

  • Full support: first 2.5 years
  • Deployment: first 3 years
  • Maintenance: first 7 years

In the specific case of RHEL 3, that means:

  • General Availability: Oct 23, 2003
  • Full Support (including hardware updates): Oct 23, 2003 – April 30, 2006
  • Deployment Support: May 1, 2006 – Oct 31, 2006
  • Maintenance Support: Nov 1, 2006 – Oct 31, 2010

In the case of RHEL 4, that means:

  • General Availability: Feb 15, 2005
  • Full Support (including hardware updates): Feb 15, 2005 – Aug 31, 2007
  • Deployment Support: Sep 1, 2007 – Feb 29, 2008
  • Maintenance Support: Mar 1, 2008 – Feb 29, 2012

In the case of RHEL 5, that means:

  • General Availability: Mar 14, 2007
  • Full Support (including hardware updates): Mar 14, 2007 – Sep 30, 2009
  • Deployment Support: Oct 1, 2009 – Mar 31, 2010
  • Maintenance Support: Apr 1, 2010 – Mar 31, 2014

Would be really nice to be able to move to RHEL 5 and forget about upgrading until 2014. As it comes with Apache 2.2 standard, things like Rails deployment would be a lot more straightforward.