Special Status Release Features

This topic describes special status release features and their support scope. It also provides a list of features in special status release for Eucalyptus 4.3.0.

Feature Release Types

There are 3 feature release types, of which 2 have special status:
  • Technology Preview - see below for the definition, policies, and current features in this special status.
  • Controlled Availability - see below for the definition, policies, and current features in this special status.
  • General Availability - fully supported features.

Feature Release Type Summary Comparison

Attribute Technology Preview Controlled Availability General Availability
Feature complete ~ ~ Yes
Supported ~ ~ * Yes
Feedback welcome Yes Yes Yes
Upgradeable ~ ~ * Yes
Production ready No ~ * Yes
Future guaranteed ~ ~ * Yes
What’s it like? Nightly / Alpha Beta Production
Performance standards ~ No * Yes
May be deprecated Yes Yes Yes; defined process

Table legend

* Per agreement – special cases and conditions to define support, upgrade / future path, production-ready status, level of performance to expect.

~ Possible - but not guaranteed.

Upgrade Compatibility and Support Scope

During the development of a special status feature, additional components may become available to the public for testing. Because special status features are still under development, we cannot guarantee the stability of such features. As a result, if you are using special status features, you may not be able to seamlessly upgrade to subsequent Eucalyptus releases.

Special status features are included in a release to provide early access to features that we may support fully in future releases, but we cannot guarantee that support will be provided or issues resolved in a future release. Some special status features may only be available for specific hardware architectures.

The Eucalyptus customer success team may create bug reports on behalf of support cases filed by subscribed customers. These bug reports will then be forwarded to Eucalyptus engineering as proposed for inclusion in a future release.

Technology Preview Definition

Technology preview features provide early access to upcoming product innovations, enabling you to test functionality and provide feedback during the development process.

Customers and users should be aware that technology preview features:

In some cases, this may be applicable to the entire cloud deployment depending on the subsystems affected by the feature in technology preview. As we consider making future iterations of technology preview features generally available, we will attempt to resolve any issues that customers experience when using these features.

Current Technology Preview Features

The following features are in technology preview for this Eucalyptus release:

Controlled Availability Definition

A controlled availability release is a conditional release of a product (or products) that does not meet a published standard, or for which we are unable to provide support under published policy.

Customers and users should be aware that controlled availability features:

  • are used to limit the shipment of a product or a release to a set of customers who agree to specific use conditions, which include migrating to a General Availability (GA) release when it is ready.
  • are generally used to deliver early releases of new products or new features of existing products to satisfy customer commitments.
  • might not include all time-critical fixes, although some defect repair might be rolled in as necessary.
  • can be ordered only with proper approval and for a specified length of time. (The approval process and order start/stop time frame are documented prior to the release in the controlled availability agreement.)

In some cases, this may be applicable to the entire cloud deployment depending on the subsystems affected by the feature in controlled availability. As we consider making future iterations of these features generally available, we will attempt to resolve any issues that customers experience when using these features.

Current Controlled Availability Features

The following features are in controlled availability for this Eucalyptus release:

x