Long Term Service Pack Support

Long Term Service Pack Support provides up to 3 years of continued access to technical support, maintenance and security patches for selected products that have reached the end of general support date. You can purchase this continued support in 1-year increments to continue access to migration, configuration, break-fix help, and Defect Resolution for Level 1 and 2 severity issues. This enables proactive planning to balance your needs for system stability and upgrading systems to get the newest open source innovations.

Datasheet

Support Subscription Plans
SUSE offers a choice of Standard or Priority Support for production deployment of applications on SLEPOS Client.

Top 4 Features

Upgrade planning with an additional 12 to 36 months of support.

SUSE generally releases service packs every 12 months and supports previous service packs for 6 months after the release of the new service pack.

You can extend your existing Standard or Priority support an additional 12-36 months in 12-month increments. Standard Support subscriptions provide 12 x 5 coverage with a 2-hour response time for critical issues. Priority Support subscriptions provide 24 x 7 coverage with a 1-hour response time for critical issues.​

Maintain system consistency with up to 13 years of support.

Most SUSE server products have a 10-year lifecycle. If you need more than that, Long Term Service Pack Support provides up to 3 years of extended support, during which time you'll continue receiving security and maintenance patches as well as technical support.

Extend time for security patches and maintenance.

You should only update your infrastructure when necessary, and on a schedule that works for your data center. During the extended support period, SUSE will deliver security patches for critical vulnerabilities, and maintenance patches for critical non-security issues. Software enhancement requests and new hardware enablement is only available for products under General Support.​

Frequently Asked Questions

01What is LTSS?

Long Term Service Pack Support (LTSS) is an extended support program that offers support and service beyond the general support period. It allows you to maintain your current operating-system version longer, preserving both the stability and security of your data center, as you transition from one service pack version to the next. With Long Term Service Pack Support you can receive three years of extended support, in addition to the standard ten years of support for each major version of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, for a total of 13 years.

02What does it include and what does it not?

Long Term Service Pack Support includes:

  • Access to SUSE's award-winning support organization for unlimited service requests
  • Hours and response times are determined by your subscription level
  • Priority subscriptions provide 24x7 coverage with 1-hour response for critical issues
  • Standard subscriptions offer 12x5 coverage with 2-hour response time for critical issues
  • Fixes for severity-level 1 (Critical) and 2 (High) defects 1

Long Term Service Pack Support does not include any software enhancement requests or hardware enablement. It is available as an extension to an existing SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscription, and is not available for new deployments that are past the end date of general support.

1 See www.suse.com/support/handbook/#severity-level-definitions for Severity Level Descriptions.

03Why should I consider LTSS?

Managers of large data centers must balance the benefits of the latest software updates against the risk and expense of changing elements of critical systems. In addition, not every business wishes to incorporate all the latest technological advances and hardware-enabled features. Enterprises with large, complex environments need flexibility to determine when or if they will move to a newer service pack while maintaining the benefits of SUSE product support.

04What is General Support?

SUSE provides ten years of general support for its core server platform products, starting the day they first become generally available. During this time period, SUSE provides patches for improving stability, enhancing performance, and addressing security vulnerabilities, and service packs that enable new hardware and software features, through basic, standard and priority subscriptions.

In addition, SUSE offers installation, configuration, migration and break-fix technical support through standard and priority subscriptions during the first ten years of the product's life. SUSE generally delivers patches through software repositories, and are provided for currently available product releases.

See the details at www.suse.com/support/policy/.

05What is Extended Support?

SUSE provides an additional three years of extended support, after general support for its platform products ends. During this period, customers with basic, standard and priority subscriptions are granted access to previously released maintenance patches. Customers with standard and priority subscriptions also receive limited migration and configuration assistance during this extended support period.

See the details at www.suse.com/support/policy/.

06How long is the lifecycle for SUSE Linux Enterprise?

SUSE Linux Enterprise products are supported for up to 13 years. For specific product-lifecycle dates, please refer to www.suse.com/lifecycle/.

07What are the architectures for which LTSS is offered?

Depending on the underlying SUSE Linux Enterprise release, LTSS is available for the following architectures:

  • ARM
  • x86 (x86_32 and x86_64)
  • IBM Power, IBM Z and LinuxONE

08How can I buy LTSS?

Please contact a SUSE representative or visit the How to Buy page.

09How can I access LTSS patches?

Information about configuring LTSS repositories to get updates is available in two places:

  • Covering installed systems with Long Term Service Pack Support repositories (SUSE Conversations article)
  • How to assign Long Term Service Pack Support repositories to installed systems (Support TID)