Alauda Container Platform v4 Life Cycle Policy
Overview
Alauda provides a published product life cycle for Alauda Container Platform ("ACP"), in order for customers and partners to effectively plan, deploy, and support their infrastructure. Alauda publishes this life cycle in an effort to provide as much transparency as possible and may make exceptions from these policies as conflicts may arise.
Alauda Container Platform v4 provides a time-delineated, phased life cycle. The time period of support is fixed from the point of minor version release. Alauda aims to forecast minor releases at a 4 month cadence, providing customers ample opportunity to plan.
Every ACP v4 minor version receives 18 months of standard support (Full Support followed by Maintenance Support). In addition, selected minor versions are designated Extended Update Support (EUS) and receive an additional 18 months of extended support (Term 1 followed by Term 2), bringing the total support window to 36 months.
All released errata will remain accessible to active subscribers across the entire life cycle.
Life Cycle Phases
Full Support
This phase begins at the GA/release of the minor version and ends after a 6 month period.
Full support is provided according to the published Scope of Coverage and Service Level Agreement.
During the Full Support Phase:
- Critical and Important Security Advisories will be released as they become available.
- Urgent and selected High Priority Bug Fix Advisories will be released as they become available.
- All other bug fix may be released via periodic updates.
- All other enhancement advisories will not be released.
In order to receive security and bug fixes, customers are expected to upgrade their ACP environment to the most current supported micro (4.y.z) version.
Maintenance Support
This phase commences after the Full Support phase for the respective minor version and ends at 18 months after GA.
During the Maintenance Support phase:
- Critical and Important Security Advisories will be released as they become available.
- Urgent and selected High Priority Bug Fix Advisories may be released as they become available.
- Other bug fix may be released at Alauda's discretion, but should not be expected.
- All other enhancement advisories will not be released.
For non-EUS minor versions, Maintenance Support ends the support life cycle. For EUS-designated minor versions, the life cycle continues into the Extended Update Support phases described below.
Extended Update Support — Term 1 (EUS-designated minors only)
This phase commences after Maintenance Support ends and lasts 6 months (months 19–24 after GA).
During EUS Term 1:
- Critical and Important Security Advisories will be backported as they become available.
- Urgent priority Bug Fix Advisories will be backported as they become available.
- Patch releases continue on the same monthly cadence as Maintenance Support; the support scope is essentially unchanged from Maintenance Support, only narrowed by removing selected High Priority bug fix.
- Other bug fix and enhancement advisories will not be released.
Extended Update Support — Term 2 (EUS-designated minors only)
This phase commences after EUS Term 1 ends and lasts 12 months (months 25–36 after GA).
During EUS Term 2:
- Critical Security Advisories will be backported as they become available. Important Security Advisories are not guaranteed.
- Urgent priority Bug Fix Advisories may be backported as they become available, with narrower scope than Term 1.
- Coverage scope is limited to ACP Core and Aligned Plugins; Agnostic Plugins are excluded from Term 2 backports.
- Releases are issued as needed; there is no fixed cadence. A release evaluation is performed monthly, but a patch is cut only when qualifying Critical Security or Urgent bug fix content is available.
- Other bug fix and enhancement advisories will not be released.
End of Life
After the support life cycle ends (18 months after GA for non-EUS minors, 36 months after GA for EUS-designated minors), software and documentation will continue to be available to customers however no technical support will be provided except assistance to upgrade to a supported version. Full functionality of an ACP cluster(s) may require access to hosted services provided by Alauda, the availability of these services cannot be guaranteed for unmaintained and unsupported versions of ACP.
EUS Designated Minor Versions
The following ACP v4 minor versions are designated EUS:
| Minor version | Designation reason |
|---|---|
| v4.0 | Customer commitment |
| v4.1 | Customer commitment |
| v4.2 | Customer commitment |
| v4.3 | First EUS anchor |
| v4.4 | Customer commitment (off-cadence) |
| v4.6 | Yearly EUS cadence |
| v4.9 | Yearly EUS cadence |
| v4.12 | Yearly EUS cadence |
| v4.15 | Yearly EUS cadence |
| ... | Yearly EUS cadence |
Going-forward rule: starting from v4.3, every 3rd minor version is designated EUS (v4.3, v4.6, v4.9, v4.12, v4.15, ...). With ACP's 4-month minor cadence, this produces approximately one EUS release per year. v4.4 is an additional EUS retained as a customer commitment and sits outside this cadence. Non-EUS minors (v4.5, v4.7, v4.8, v4.10, v4.11, v4.13, ...) follow the standard 18-month life cycle.
EUS designation is fixed at minor GA and does not change retroactively.
Life Cycle Dates
| Version | EUS | General availability | Full support ends | Maintenance support ends | EUS Term 1 ends | EUS Term 2 ends |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full Support | ||||||
| v4.4.z | EUS | 2026-08-17 | 2027-02-17 | 2028-02-17 | 2028-08-17 | 2029-08-17 |
| v4.3.z | EUS | 2026-04-16 | 2026-10-16 | 2027-10-16 | 2028-04-16 | 2029-04-16 |
| Maintenance Support | ||||||
| v4.2.z | EUS | 2025-12-08 | 2026-06-08 | 2027-06-08 | 2027-12-08 | 2028-12-08 |
| v4.1.z | EUS | 2025-07-31 | 2026-01-31 | 2027-01-31 | 2027-07-31 | 2028-07-31 |
| v4.0.z | EUS | 2025-04-08 | 2025-10-08 | 2026-10-08 | 2027-04-08 | 2028-04-08 |
| End of life | ||||||
Estimated minor release cadence: 4 months.
v4.4 and later minors will be added to this table at GA. Of those, v4.4 (a customer commitment) plus v4.6, v4.9, v4.12, ... are EUS-designated and gain the additional EUS Term 1 / Term 2 end columns; the remaining minors end at Maintenance Support.
The former name of this product is: Alauda Container Platform.
All future dates mentioned are close approximations, non definitive, and subject to change.