Maintenance Release Changes in BRMS and BPM Suite 6.1+
Introduction
With Red Hat JBoss BRMS 6.1 and Red Hat BPM Suite 6.1, maintenance releases for the product will transition to a new model that is designed to better meet customer expectations.
For the BRMS/BPM Suite 5.x and 6.0.x releases, maintenance was provided through several release vehicles.
- Asynchronous security patches and asynchronous bug-fix patches, or individual patches, are provided as needed according to the terms in the Red Hat JBoss Middleware Product Update and Support Policy.
- Additional fixes of lower severity or criticality are provided in Micro releases (5.3.1, 6.0.1, 6.0.2) that consist of an entire product release.
- Fixes are included in Minor releases (6.0, 6.1), that also provide new product features.
Why are we changing the model?
Feedback from customers shows that Micro releases and numerous individual patches are not the most effective vehicles to meet customer maintenance expectations. Because Micro releases are a full release, it is often a challenge for users to upgrade because of policy restrictions or concerns about the overhead required to complete the work.
Individual patches provided for earlier 6.x releases have also proven to be a maintenance burden for users, as they occasionally need to manage a large number of patches.
In order to better meet customer expectations, Micro releases for BRMS and BPM Suite 6 will be discontinued upon the 6.1 release and replaced with patch updates delivered on a repeating schedule, targeting as estimative a new release every 6 weeks.
How will Red Hat deliver patches for Red Hat JBoss BRMS / BPM Suite 6.1 and beyond?
A Cumulative Patch managed by a new Patching Tool This content is not included.for BRMS and This content is not included.for BPM Suite to apply patches, remove patches, and view patch state will be delivered.
Each new patch update will contain a number of bug-fixes for customer reported issues and potentially a number of security fixes. We expect that the patch updates will substantially reduce the number of individual patches that we produce and that customers must manage to keep their installations up to date.
However, we do not expect to eliminate individual patches as a release vehicle as they will still be used to provide time or severity critical fixes - the idea is reduce them by regular update releases that are a better consistent approach. Very critical individual fixes will be made available via support cases as they are not for general consumption. Patch updates will include any individual patches released in between patch updates.
With this change we intend to enable users to update their BRMS / BPM Suite installations more frequently, with less effort, and lower costs.
- Fewer individual patches will lower the management burden for administrators.
- Cumulative patches with multiple fixes are tested together, to improve quality and reduce risk.
- And finally, a new tooling for managing patches will reduce risk and effort for user who apply them.