Collection Life Cycles
This offering publishes a product life cycle for all Ansible for IBM Z collections so that customers and partners can properly plan, deploy, support, and maintain the automation that they use.
The product life cycle encompasses serviceable periods for each version, the life cycle phase which identifies the various levels of maintenance over a period of time from the initial release date and an explanation of the severities.
Customers are expected to upgrade their environments to the most current supported version of the product in a timely fashion. Features and bug fixes target only the latest versions of the product, though some allowance may be given for high security risk items.
Life Cycle Phase
To encourage the adoption of new features while keeping the high standard of stability inherent, support is divided into life cycle phases:
Full support covers the first year of the products life cycle.
Maintenance support covers the second year of the products life cycle.
Severity |
Full Support (year 1) |
Maintenance Support (year 2) |
|---|---|---|
Critical |
Yes |
Yes |
High |
Yes |
No |
Critical and high severities are included in year 1, while critical severities are included only in year 2.
Medium and low severities are generally addressed in subsequent releases to ensure stability and quality persists for production environments.
Severity Descriptions
Severity descriptions describe the impact to the customer. Severity assignment is only applicable to customers who obtain Ansible for IBM Z collections from Ansible Automation Platform and are entitled for IBM Z.
For community issues, the severity and delivery is set by the team who triages the issue.
Severity |
Description |
|---|---|
Critical |
A problem that severely impacts your use of the software in a production environment (such as loss of production data or in which your production systems are not functioning). The situation halts your business operations and no procedural workaround exists, includes security issues. |
High |
A problem where the software is functioning but your use in a production environment is severely reduced. The situation is causing a high impact to portions of your business operations and no procedural workaround exists. |
Medium |
A problem that involves partial, non-critical loss of use of the software in a production environment or development environment and your business continues to function, including by using a procedural workaround. |
Low |
A general usage question, reporting of a documentation error, or recommendation for a future product enhancement or modification. |
Note
Currently, the IBM z/OS Core collection is the only collection with a documented life cycle, others to follow soon.