Vivid Trace lifecycle

Support schedule of current Vivid Trace releases

The lifecycle status and support schedule for current releases of Vivid Trace indicated in the following graph. The most recent release line in End of Support status is included for reference.

Vivid Trace's support lifecycle assists you in maximizing long-term value of your Vivid Trace deployment, especially in conjunction with your active maintenance subscription. Our feature release and patch regime prioritizes availability and stability of your deployment, without you being forced onto a potentially destabilizing upgrade treadmill. Because patch releases do not introduce new features or other improvements, you can confidently install them to keep your deployment up-to-date. You can install newer feature releases at your discretion to obtain new features and improvements.

Support lifecycle

Each feature release line has its own support schedule, demarked by status: Full Support, later leading to Sunset status and eventually being archived as End of Support.

Full support

Initially, a feature release has Full support, meaning that you can obtain support through Support and that Vivid actively supplies you with patch releases that you can apply with confidence and minimal fuss.

Sunset

After some time and according to a variety of factors, the release line transits to Sunset status, meaning Vivid continues to offer you support through Vivid Support but no longer produces patches except in special circumstances.

End of support

Host platform end-of-life schedules, dwindling customer deployments, and other factors precipitate eventual End of Support status where the release line is archived, effectively drawing an end to support from Vivid.

Retracted

From time to time, extenuating circumstances may necessitate the retraction of a specific Vivid Trace release; retractions are documented in the appropriate Release Notes. Retracted releases are not supported.

Updates to lifecycle status: Vivid's product planning and engineering discipline prioritizes actual customer usage and needs. With the release of a new version, Vivid reviews and publishes updates regarding the support status of all release lines according to a variety of factors. Updates to the lifecycle require customers to be alert for forthcoming modifications to their deployment. Vivid strives to provide reasonable advance notification of changes to the lifecycle status. Such changes are announced in the accompanying Release Notes.

Release versioning scheme

Releases of Vivid Trace come in two types: Feature releases that introduce new features and increase the value of Vivid Trace to you, and Patch releases that fix known defects in feature releases. These releases use a familiar industry-standard versioning scheme to help you quickly identity a version's utility to your particular situation.

Feature releases

Year

Sequence

Feature releases introduce new features and improvements. They are versioned with the year of their delivery and the sequence number of the feature release made within the given year. As feasible, feature releases include patch fixes from all other releases in aggregate.

Patch releases

Year

Sequence

Patch

Patch releases solely provide fixes to defects. They are intended to be as reliable or better than any earlier patch versions within the same feature release line. In contrast to feature releases, patch releases do not introduce new features, meaning that they can be subjected to a lighter vetting process to speed deployment into your production environment.

Example

2031.3

The third feature release of Vivid Trace during calendar year 2031. As a feature release, it introduces new features and improvements. The sequence number 3 implies that two other feature releases were made during 2031 prior to this one, namely 2031.1 and 2031.2.

2031.3.1

The 1st patch release of 2031.3. Fixes some defects in 2031.3. Does not introduce any new functionality. Having deployed 2031.3 into your production environment, you likely want to upgrade to this patch release 2031.3.1.

2031.3.2

The 2nd patch release specific to 2031.3. Includes all defect fixes of 2031.3.1 plus additional fixes. Upon release, this patch release becomes the best vintage of the 2031.3 release line, and Vivid recommends you to upgrade to it. To access newer features and improvements beyond the 2031.3 release line, you would need to install a newer feature release, be it 2031.4 or 2032.1 or beyond.

Vivid Trace support lifecycle

Support schedule of current Vivid Trace releases