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Frequently Asked Questions




What 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.

What 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.

Why 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.

What 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/.

What 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/.

How 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/.