Lifecycle Policy

Effective: 16 May 2023

Instaclustr’s Lifecycle Policy defines Instaclustr support for offerings as they are superseded by preferable options and ultimately head toward end of life. Lifecycle terminology and concepts may be applied to applications, add-ons, versions, node sizes, and providers on the Instaclustr Platform.  

Lifecycle State Definitions 

Public Preview 

Public Preview is for offerings that are still under development but available to customers for early use. Public Preview offerings are still undergoing some extended testing by the Instaclustr team, including performance testing, or may be release candidates by Open Source projects. These offerings may not be functionally complete, and are likely to have substantial changes before they enter General Availability. SLA restrictions may apply to clusters in Public Preview. 

While these are enabled for customer usage, it is required that you contact Instaclustr Support, and perform your own testing before using in production. 

The Public Preview state will typically transition to General Availability after a short period of time if no issues are found. 

General Availability 

General Availability offerings are fully enabled for customer usage, ready for production use, and have no restrictions on SLAs. These offerings are recommended by Instaclustr for new deployments as they provide customers with the most complete range of features, bug fixes and security patches. 

There is no set time on how long offerings remain in the General Availability state, and when they will be moved to the Deprecated state as newer offerings become available. The notice period for any major version moving from General Availability to End of Life (via the intermediate stages) will be a minimum of 6 months and typically 12 months. 

Deprecated 

Deprecated is for offerings which are fully supported and tested by Instaclustr, but are not our recommended choice for new deployments. Generally, offerings will be moved into Deprecated when Instaclustr has added a preferable choice in General Availability. That could be a newer application version with bug fixes, or faster or more cost effective instances available. 

Offerings in Deprecated are still fully supported by Instaclustr, and have no restrictions on SLAs. 

Offerings in Deprecated are available for all customers to continue to create new deployments. There is no set time for how long offerings will remain in Deprecated; however, typically customers can expect a minimum of 3 month’s notice when offerings will be moved into Closed to begin your transition planning with Instaclustr. 

Closed 

Closed is for offerings that are still fully supported and tested by Instaclustr – but are only available for new deployments by exception to allow customers to transition their fleet to General Availability offerings. Typically, offerings will only be moved into Closed when we have a preferable choice in General Availability, and these offerings are on the path to being end of life. That could be a newer application version with bug fixes, or faster or more cost effective instances available. 

Offerings in Closed have no restrictions on SLAs. 

Offerings in Closed are only available for customers to create new deployments if they have currently running clusters using the version, or node size. This is to allow customers to create additional deployments for testing purposes, perform application testing, or give them adequate time to upgrade their automated tooling. Instaclustr recommends customers to use Generally Available offerings in place of Closed offerings in any new deployments. 

There is no set time how long offerings will remain in Closed, however typically customers can expect a minimum of 3 months’ notice, and will be notified through their transition planning with Instaclustr when offerings will be moved into Legacy Support. 

Legacy Support 

Legacy Support is a restricted offering where new deployments are not available to customers. If your cluster reaches this state, Instaclustr will be working with you to plan and execute upgrades of any remaining infrastructure. 

Typically, offerings will only be moved to Legacy Support when there is a preferable choice in General Availability, and these offerings are nearing End of Life. 

Customers will not be able to create new deployments in Legacy Support, and will need to reach out to our Support team if you do have a requirement for additional Legacy Support deployments. 

There are no restrictions on SLAs for offerings which are in Legacy Support – however, customers do need to be aware that after a set period of time, they will be moved to End of Life where offerings are no longer supported by Instaclustr. 

There is no set time on how long offerings will remain in Legacy Support, however, typically customers can expect a minimum of 3 months’ notice when offerings will be moved into End of Life. 

End of Life 

End of Life is for offerings that are no longer supported by Instaclustr. Instaclustr will have previously notified customers that their deployments are nearing End of Life and we require that these deployments are upgraded or replaced. 

Offerings will be moved into End of Life when there is a preferable choice in General Availability, and there is a risk of issues by continuing to use these offerings which are no longer supported by Instaclustr. 

No customer will be able to create deployments that are End of Life, and Production SLAs will not apply. Any issues encountered on an End of Life cluster will not be supported by Instaclustr, however Instaclustr will work with you to update the cluster to a more suitable offering. 

Retired 

Retired is for offerings that are no longer available on the Instaclustr Platform – or supported by Instaclustr. Instaclustr will have previously notified all customers with deployments that they are nearing Retired and we require that these deployments are upgraded or replaced.  

Offerings will be moved into Retired when there is a risk of issues by continuing to use these offerings, which are no longer supported by Instaclustr. 

No customer will be able to create clusters that are Retired, and SLAs will not apply. Any issues encountered on a Retired deployment will not be supported by Instaclustr, however Instaclustr will work with you to update the deployment to a more suitable offering.  

Limited Availability 

Limited Availability is for specific customer use cases, and offerings in this state are fully supported by the Instaclustr Team. 

These offerings fit a particular use case; however, they are not generally recommended for wider use. Limited Availability has full production SLAs under an Instaclustr agreement. Customers who have these offerings enabled can create new deployments. 

Instaclustr will continue to support existing deployments on older versions of Open Source applications for at least 6 months beyond the project support date. However, we will begin to restrict the creation of new deployments with application versions or node sizes as they transition through our Lifecycle policies. 

Lifecycle Policy Matrix