Enabling long-term stability: Introducing Red Hat Enterprise Linux Extended Life Cycle, Premium

For organizations managing mission-critical workloads, long-term stability and predictability are not just preferences—they are necessities. Recognizing this need, Red Hat is proud to introduce Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Extended Life Cycle, Premium, a new, stand-alone offering designed to provide easily consumable, significantly longer life cycles for your most vital systems.

This premium offering builds upon the solid foundation of the RHEL Premium subscription, extending maintenance beyond the traditional ten year timeline. It is an indispensable solution for highly regulated industries such as financial services, telecommunications, government, healthcare, transportation, manufacturing, and energy, where operational consistency and strict regulatory alignment are paramount.

Extended maintenance for unmatched stability

The RHEL Extended Life Cycle, Premium offering is engineered to deliver peace of mind through an extended support window:

• 6 years of extended maintenance for even-numbered versions: To further enhance stability, the subscription also offers six years of extended maintenance for specific minor releases. This enables a stable, static update stream, providing extra years of critical security and urgent bug fixes. Organizations can maintain a consistent production environment for an extended period without the pressure of an immediate minor release upgrade.
• 14-year lifecycle for a major RHEL version: Going beyond the standard 10-year support and maintenance lifecycle, this subscription provides an additional four years of extended maintenance. This is crucial for organizations facing constraints such as hardware compatibility or complex application dependencies that prevent immediate migration to a newer major release. This extended coverage includes essential critical-impact security fixes, selected urgent priority bug fixes, and continued troubleshooting for the final minor release of a major RHEL version.
• Packages within RHEL: As long as a package is not at end of life, Red Hat may provide security fixes for critical, important, and moderate CVEs with a CVSS score of 7 or higher, as defined by Red Hat in a Red Hat Security Advisory (RHSA), and urgent and selected high priority bug fixes as defined by Red Hat in a Red Hat Bug Advisory (RHBA).

Premium service components

The RHEL Extended Life Cycle, Premium subscription includes the same comprehensive, world-class service level components that define the RHEL Premium subscription, so your operations are always supported:

• 24x7 technical support: Gain access to Red Hat's global support engineers around the clock for Severity 1 and 2 issues, with standard business hours coverage for lower severity incidents.
• Unlimited incidents: There are no restrictions on the number of support cases you can open, so that you get help whenever you need it.
• Multi-channel access: Support is readily available over web and phone channels.

The RHEL Extended Life Cycle, Premium offering is more than just an extension or add-on, it's an investment in the longevity, security, and predictability of your most critical operations. For detailed information on this offering and the full scope of our lifecycle policy, visit Red Hat’s Customer Portal.