1. Overview

Because the container ecosystem is rapidly evolving, understanding supportability policies is an important part of keeping your environment supportable and secure. This article describes not only the support policy for Twistlock itself, but also for other software you may integrate it with.

You can always find the most up to date information on available releases, along with download links, on the Releases page.

2. Definitions

Major Releases (X.Y.z)

Include significant new features and changes. These are also known as 'milestones' and include significant new functionality; they are released approximately every 8-10 weeks and include all applicable fixes made in previous releases. These are versions such as 2.4 and 2.5.

Maintenance Releases (x.y.Z)

Also known as 'updates', these are released to correct specific problems in previous releases. They incorporate all applicable defect corrections made in prior Maintenance Releases. These are versions such as 2.5.91.

End of Life (EOL)

Versions that are no longer supported by Twistlock. Updating to a later version is recommended.

Support

Includes not only resolution of technical issues through interactive assistance, but also fixes delivered in maintenance releases to correct problems.

3. Twistlock supportability policy

Twistlock has an 'n-1' support policy that means the current release ('n') and the previous release ('n-1') receive support.

Note that in some cases, resolution of a problem in the n-1 version may require upgrading to a current build. Twistlock will make commercially reasonable efforts to work with customers that require porting fixes back to the n-1 version but sometimes architectural changes are significant enough between versions that this is practically impossible without making the n-1 version essentially the same as the n version.

4. Third party dependencies

The container ecosystem is constantly evolving and there are sometimes requirements from third-party vendors that may impact Twistlock’s supportability options. For example, Twistlock cannot effectively support third-party software that the vendor (or project) itself no longer supports. This is often most relevant in the case of the Docker Engine itself. Since Twistlock often adds new features that take advantage of new capabilities in Docker, Twistlock only provides commercial support for versions of Docker that Docker itself supports. This ensures that updates can be properly tested and supported throughout customers' environments.

For more information about Twistlock’s support for Docker, see System requirements.

Note that we take the same approach to other technologies that interface with Twistlock, such as the host operating systems, orchestrators, registries, and so on. In all cases, Twistlock will provide commercially reasonable assistance to try and resolve problems, but it may require upgrading components to vendor supported versions.