Support Policy

TSB Releases explained

We develop and release Tetrate Service Bridge on an incremental basis, using an Agile-like approach to deliver feature updates and fixes to customers promptly.

Our versioning uses a MAJOR.MINOR.POINT version numbering style (e.g. 1.12.3):

• We make point releases on a regular schedule, typically every 6-8 weeks.
• We make minor releases typically every 4 months (3 per year)
• The major version number is unchanged from our first generally-available release

Point Releases

Point releases (e.g. 1.12.x) may contain:

• CVE fixes for dependent components and other critical security fixes
• Incremental additions to existing features
• New or extended APIs (breaking changes are avoided as far as possible)
• Early new features, disabled-by-default where necessary

We test upgrade paths from a variety of earlier releases extensively, but please contact Tetrate support if you want advice and confirmation before commencing a significantly-large upgrade.

Minor Releases

Minor releases (e.g. 1.13.0) may contain:

• Product changes as described for point releases

In addition, a minor release may contain:

• Significant changes (minor versions) to dependencies such as Istio
• Significant breaking changes (these are to be avoided as far as possible)

When we make a minor release, we will also:

• Update the documentation, creating a new latest version and leaving the previous version available for reference
• Assess our feature maturity, announcing features that are promoted to 'Generally-Available' status, or features that will be retired in later releases

Support Policy

Each new MINOR release falls under the long term support policy, in which Tetrate provides support starting from the official General Availability (GA) release date of the MINOR release, to the End of General Support (EoGS).

End of General Support (EoGS) for a MINOR release (e.g. 1.12.x) is the later of:

• 12 months after the release of the first Minor release e.g. 1.12.0
• The date of the N+3 MINOR release, e.g. 1.15.0

... meaning that generally, TSB MINOR versions N, N-1 and N-2 are fully supported (our N-2 support policy), and each minor version is supported for a minimum of 1 year after initial release.

Any release after EOGS will not be supported unless extended support has been arranged with Tetrate prior to the EoGS date.

During the release's support window, bug and security fixes will be provided for each eligible MINOR version, through the use of POINT releases (e.g. v1.x.1). A new POINT release does not reset the support lifetime duration, as it is tied to the initial MINOR release. Point releases include fixes for TSB specific components, as well as fixes for its open source components like Envoy, Istio, SkyWalking, and Zipkin.

Supported Upgrade Policy

TSB follows a structured upgrade policy to maintain compatibility and stability across platform versions. This policy, defined as N-2, ensures that any given version of the TSB Management Plane (MP) is fully compatible with Control Plane (CP) versions released up to two versions prior (N-2).

Understanding the N-2 Upgrade Policy

• For any TSB Management Plane version, denoted as 1.x, compatibility is assured with the 1.(x-2) version of the TSB Control Plane.
• For instance, if you are using TSB Management Plane (MP) version 1.13.x, it is guaranteed to be compatible with TSB Control Plane (CP) version 1.11.x.
• However, this policy does not guarantee compatibility with Control Plane versions that are three or more releases behind the current Management Plane version. Continuing the previous example, TSB MP 1.13.x would not be guaranteed to work with CP 1.10.x.

Implications for Upgrading

• When planning upgrades, it is important to consider this policy to ensure compatibility between the Management Plane and Control Plane versions.
• This policy aids in maintaining a stable and predictable environment, reducing the risks associated with version incompatibility.

Recommendations

• Users are advised to regularly update their Control Plane versions to stay within the N-2 compatibility range of their Management Plane version.
• Staying up-to-date with the latest releases not only ensures compatibility but also provides access to the latest features and security updates.

Updates and Fixes

Tetrate will issue updates and fixes to the most recent MINOR release.

For earlier supported MINOR releases, Tetrate will supply critical patches, security fixes for its components, and the underlying OSS dependencies as described in our component matrix.

Features are not back ported to earlier supported MINOR releases. Please see the release notes and the feature status documents for released features.

TSB EoGS dates

EoGS dates may be extended according to the N+3 policy explained above.

TSB Version	General Availability	End of General Support
TSB v1.12.x	27 February, 2025	26 February, 2026
TSB v1.11.x	15 November, 2024	14 November, 2025
TSB v1.10.x	17 July, 2024	16 July, 2025
TSB v1.9.x	12 April, 2024	11 April, 2025
TSB v1.8.x	21 December, 2023	20 December, 2024
TSB v1.7.x	15 September, 2023	31 May, 2024
TSB v1.6.x	1 January, 2023	1 March, 2024
TSB v1.5.x	15 July, 2022	22 December, 2023
TSB v1.4.x	1 November, 2021	31 October, 2022
TSB v1.3.x	1 June, 2021	31 May, 2022
TSB v1.2.x	1 May, 2021	30 April, 2022
TSB v1.1.x	1 April, 2021	31 March, 2022
TSB v1.0.x	1 March, 2021	28 February, 2022

TSB Platform compatibility

Tetrate maintains the commitment to test TSB compatibility with Generally Supported k8s versions (approximately most recent three minor releases). For details on Kubernetes release policy refer to this document.

Tetrate maintains the commitment to test TSB Compatibility with OpenShift releases that are either in Full Support or Maintenance Support phase of their lifecycle. Generally, this means most recent 4 minor OpenShift releases. For details on OpenShift Life Cycle Policy refer to official RedHat documentation.

Where possible, Tetrate makes its best effort to verify TSB compatibility with earlier platform releases that may have reached their EoL. For further details, please refer to Tetrate support.

Additionally, Tetrate makes its best effort to verify TSB compatibility with MKE 3.7+

TSB Release	Verified Kubernetes Versions	Verified OpenShift Versions
TSB v1.10.0	1.27-1.30	4.12-4.16

TSB Supported Additional Platforms

Tetrate Service Bridge supports additional platforms for workload onboarding onto the mesh:

Platforms	Notes
AWS EC2 - virtual machine instances	Onboarding authenticated using AWS Account credentials
AWS ECS tasks	See notes
On-prem or other cloud-hosted VMs	Onboarding authenticated using JWT tokens

Onboarding is handled by a Tetrate Onboarding Agent and Istio Sidecar. Tetrate provide packages for the following environments:

Supported OS	Notes
RHEL family	RHEL 8+, Amazon Linux 2023; installation via RPM packages
Debian family	Debian 9+, Ubuntu 20.04+; installation via DEB packages

TSB Component Version Matrix

Tetrate Service Bridge comes with the following open source components

TSB	Istio	Envoy	SkyWalking	Cert Manager	OpenTelemetry Collector
master	1.26.1	1.34.2	10.3.0-20250721-122017	v1.16.1-tetrate-v7	0.129.1

TSB Feature Definitions Terminology

Features in TSB are designated in 5 different stages as described below. Any stages apart from the Production (Default) stage, are identified in the Feature Status Table, API References, and Guides.

Feature Stage	Notes
Alpha	Disabled by default, and can be enabled only by Tetrate Support. These features are for customers' initial testing, and for collecting feedback
Beta	Limited availability feature that is pre-Production standard. These features are for customers' evaluation within any licensing or feature flag restrictions. The API is subject to change, although unlikely
Production	Default - These features are Generally Available for use in Production. Any feature that has not been explicitly identified in any of the other stages can be considered as Production-ready
Deprecated	These features are deprecated from the Product and will be removed in a future release based on the their impact and usage (see the Deprecation Policy below for details)
End of Life	These features are End of Life and will be removed from the Product

TSB Deprecation Policy

• Features that are deprecated are identified in the Release Notes, API references, and Guides.
• The information also includes the Release in which they are deprecated and the Release in which they will be removed (End of Life).
• When a feature is deprecated, users should stop using the feature, or migrate to any recommended alternate solutions.
• Upon deprecation, the feature is removed (End of Life) from the product 2 or 4 minor releases later as annotated per-feature in the Feature Status Table.

info

Please work with your Customer Engineering Representative or Tetrate Support to plan the migration from the feature(s) that are deprecated to the recommended alternate solutions.