HashiCorp is introducing Long-Term Support (LTS) releases for certain commercial products. The LTS versions enable customers to stay on a supported major version for up to two years at a time, with a promise that HashiCorp will backport critical fixes and security patches, and provide hardened upgrade paths to the next LTS release.
HashiCorp provides enterprise software that powers mission-critical applications, along with a world-class support commitment to ensure the availability of services. Our standard support policy includes providing support for the current major version, along with the last two major versions (called N-2). We typically release major new versions every 3-4 months, with minor patch releases in between. This means customers need to update regularly to remain on a supported major version.
With the introduction of Long-Term Support (LTS) releases, we are extending that support window to two years. Customers running LTS versions will receive critical fixes and security patches between LTS releases, and hardened upgrade paths to the next LTS release. The upgrade path will include the ability to skip intermediate major releases, so that customers can batch upgrades with fewer steps. This will reduce the time and effort required for customers to upgrade, and allows for less frequent updates to critical systems, to help reduce risk and improve operational efficiency.
We will introduce LTS releases for the following products with the next major version:
- HashiCorp Vault
- HashiCorp Consul
- HashiCorp Nomad
We will introduce LTS releases for HashiCorp Boundary at the time of its 1.0 release.
For the Community Edition of these products, we will continue to provide bug fixes and patches on the current major release. Community users will have access to all security patches and bug fixes by upgrading to the most recent release.
Table 1: Illustration of version releases and supported lifetime