This document covers Rancher Prime subscription offerings.

Overview

Rancher Prime offers SLA backed enterprise grade support for Rancher and access to trusted delivery mechanisms to manage and operate Kubernetes deployments with a high degree of confidence. Depending on the customer’s needs, the customer may purchase Rancher Prime subscriptions with “Standard” or “Priority” support models.

Unique entitlements that are included as part of Rancher Prime subscriptions are:

  • Uncovering the root cause of issues that lead to potential bug fixes and/or product enhancements

  • Rancher supportability reviews

  • Rancher upgrade validation checks

  • Access to a private slack channel

  • A trusted image registry

  • Access to Rancher Prime Knowledge Base artifacts upon their availability on SUSE Collective


Customers may also purchase support for key related products, such as but not limited to Longhorn, Harvester, and NeuVector, as add-on subscriptions to their Rancher Prime subscription.

This document provides an overview of the respective offerings with the most current terms found in the license agreements.

Updates

Rancher and key related products are updated with a regular cadence, and support for a particular release will be delivered according to the relevant release lifecycle. Over time, new releases become generally available, new products may be added, and older products will move through the lifecycle and reach end of life. Information on this can be found in the “Rancher Prime Support Matrix”. For the current lifecycle, please refer to our Lifecycle Page: https://www.suse.com/lifecycle.

The lifecycle of Rancher and key related products can be found at these links, also found within the above page.

Rancher Prime Support Matrix and Supportability

Customers purchasing Rancher Prime subscriptions are given access to Rancher software via a trusted registry. SUSE maintains a support matrix that shows validated configurations and certified component technology selections for each supported version of Rancher. 

For SUSE's Rancher Prime supportability Matrix, please refer to our Support Matrix Page: https://www.suse.com/suse-rancher/support-matrix/all-supported-versions/

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

Information about Severity Levels can be  found in our Support Handbook: https://www.suse.com/support/handbook/.

  • Standard Support includes business hour coverage (by region and without holidays)
  • Priority Support adds 24x7 coverage for Severity 1 and 2 issues.

Severity 

Target Response Time 

Level 

Standard Support 

Priority Support 

1 (Critical) 

2 Business Hours 

1 Hour 

2 (High) 

4 Business Hours 

2 Hours 

3 (Medium) 

Next Business Day 

4 Business Hours 

4 (Low) 

Next Business Day 

Next Business Day 

Understanding Rancher Release Versions

Please see the Rancher Support Matrix: https://www.suse.com/suse-rancher/support-matrix/all-supported-versions/

"Major Releases" (X.y.z) deliver major features and enhancements. They are not guaranteed backwards compatible with any previous Major Release.

“Minor Releases” (x.Y.z) deliver minor feature developments, enhancements to existing features, and bug fixes. They incorporate all applicable fixes made in prior minor and maintenance releases.

"Maintenance Releases" (x.y.Z) deliver bug fixes that are severely affecting several customers and cannot wait for the next major or minor release. They incorporate all applicable fixes made in prior maintenance releases.

Supportability Review

SUSE provides customers with assistance in determining supportability with validated configurations and technology selections. Customers with an active Priority subscription are entitled to request up to three (3) annual supportability reviews delivered by the SUSE support team.  Requests can be made via a regular support case.

Upgrade Validation

Customers with an active Priority Plan subscription may request up to two (2) annual upgrade path validation checks and standby support for their planned upgrades of Rancher. Requests can be made via a regular support case.

Rancher Prime Deprecation Policy

Deprecation of Functionality/Features in Minor Releases

SUSE occasionally deprecates Rancher features for various reasons. Reasons for deprecation could include a feature being updated or replaced by a new implementation, a new feature set, upstream technology is no longer available or has made incompatible changes, etc.

When a feature is deprecated, SUSE will aim to follow the steps outlined in the table below:

RANCHER PRIME RELEASE 

FEATURE STATE 

x.y.z 

GA 

x.(y+1).z 

Deprecation notice provided to users. The feature will be supported and maintained throughout the supported lifecycle of the minor release. 

x.(y+2).z 

Deprecated. This feature will be available to support users who need to upgrade from the X.Y.Z release. The feature is only available as-is and will only receive critical security updates. The functionality will only be certified to run on the lowest Kubernetes version supported by this release. Users must move to a new solution before upgrading Kubernetes version.

x.(y+3).z 

EOL. The feature is removed from Rancher Prime in this release. Users must have migrated away from or disabled this feature before upgrading to this release. 

Notification that a feature is deprecated will be announced in the Rancher Prime release notes. Visual cues may appear in the user interface (“UI”), indicating which feature is deprecated and suggesting a replacement (if there is one).

If deprecation is announced in a minor release, customers can expect the feature to be available and supported until the general availability of the next major release. Upgrading from a previous Rancher Prime product version to this release is supported. Upgrading to a release where the feature is EOL without migrating from or disabling the feature beforehand is not supported. Upgrading to a release where the feature is EOL without first disabling the functionality, could cause a situation where Rancher breaks or becomes inoperable. We recommend users check release notes and optionally request an upgrade path validation before each upgrade via a support case.

During the deprecation period, SUSE will use commercially reasonable efforts to maintain and support the deprecated functionality. In some cases, updates might no longer be available upstream, or incompatible changes with the existing functionality might prevent Rancher Prime from being able to provide updates or bug fixes to the feature. During the deprecated release lifecycle, users may still open issues and file bugs against the features.

Deprecation of Functionality/Features in Major Releases

In a major release, there will be major changes to product functionality, features, and behaviors. There is no guarantee that these changes are backward compatible or offer similar functionality. Features that have been dropped, deprecated or altered will be documented in the release notes.

Exceptions

There may be circumstances that are not described in this document. All deprecation notes, including those by exceptions, will be included in the Release notes for the release. 

Private Slack Channel

In addition to Support cases raised via the SUSE Customer Center (also referred to as SCC), customers may engage SUSE’s customer success and via dedicated, private Slack channels available to Rancher Prime customers with a Priority subscription.  Target response times of Cases do not apply to Slack channel conversations, which are primarily intended for basic Q&A and Customer-only advisories related to Product, Operations, and Security.

Trusted Registry

The Rancher Prime subscription optionally allows Customers to download Rancher images from a trusted, private registry that is owned and managed by SUSE. Customers can choose to not use this and continue to use their existing registry endpoints, until reaching a reasonable point of readiness for adopting the Rancher Prime registry. For best supportability, Customers are advised to switch over to the new trusted, private registry as part of an upgrade to Rancher 2.7 and above.

Customisations

Individual customisations of Rancher software by the user may have unintended consequences and cause issues that are not present with the original, unmodified software. As a general rule, Rancher Prime support is limited to issues that relate to the original Rancher software only. If a customer requests support for customized Rancher software, the customer must reproduce the bugs, defect of other issue on an unmodified version of the Rancher software prior to the submission of a support case or bug report. Additionally, the Customer is required to state all customisations present on the system when submitting a support case.

Any change to the original source and binary code qualifies as  “customization”, including but not limited to changes to the UI, the addition or modification of adapters such as for authentication, VM or server provisioning, deploying the software (e.g., the management server) on an operating system or with software versions that are not certified by SUSE (klick here for all supported versions: https://www.suse.com/suse-rancher/support-matrix/all-supported-versions/), and altering the scripts and byte code included with the product.

Access

In order to provide Rancher Prime support, SUSE may require actual or remote access to the Rancher Prime software product and/or the systems on which the Rancher Prime software product operates. Customer agrees to provide any such access and other assistance reasonably requested by SUSE.

Language Support 

SUSE provides Rancher Prime support in English unless otherwise agreed upon within a contract.  

Frequently Asked Questions 

Refer to the Rancher Support FAQs https://suse.com/rancher-support-faq.