Versions, Platforms, and Deprecation

Buoyant provides formal support commitments for BEL releases to our customers. This page describes types and scope of those commitments.

Release channels

Buoyant provides two release channels for BEL releases: stable and preview.

Stable releases (e.g. enterprise-2.18.3) are intended for production use. Stable releases strict “semantic versioning” guarantees that provide explicit control over the level of risk introduced by upgrades. (See below.)

Preview releases (e.g. preview-25.9.1) are not intended for production use and may not provide the same set of functionality or guarantees as enterprise releases. Preview releases are not stable releases and do not follow semantic versioning. You generally should not use preview releases unless explicitly instructed by Buoyant support personnel.

Stable release versions

Semantic versioning

BEL stable release version numbers follow the form enterprise-2.<major>.<minor>. In other words, 2 is a static prefix, followed by the major version, then the minor. For example, enterprise-2.18.0 denotes a stable release with major version 18, minor version 0.

Changes in version number have the following implications:

• Major version changes will typically introduce large new features, and may introduce breaking changes if necessary.
• Minor version changes are intended to be backwards compatible with the previous minor version and will not introduce breaking changes. These releases will primary provide bugfixes, and will rarely introduce new features unless they are exceedingly low risk.

For example:

• enterprise-2.17.0 to enterprise-2.17.1: minor version upgrade. Should not introduce breaking changes.
• enterprise-2.17.1 to enterprise-2.18.0: major version upgrade. May introduce breaking changes that require action on your part; see release notes for details.

Hotpatch versions

We also publish hotpatch versions for stable releases that are designed to ease compliance with automated security scanners. These releases are marked with an additional patch level suffix. For example:

• enterprise-2.18.0-0: major version 18, minor version 0, no hotpatch
• enterprise-2.18.0-1: major version 18, minor version 0, hotpatch 1

Hotpatch releases are only available on some plans. See Plans and Pricing for details.

Support and deprecation

Buoyant provides four levels of support for BEL releases: Active, Maintenance, EOL, and Archived. Each level provides different guarantees.

Support levels

On-call support and hotpatches are only available on some plans. See Plans and Pricing for details.

Support lifetimes

Bugfix policy

Buoyant typically maintains multiple simultaneous active releases. While we make every effort to backport bugfixes to all active versions, sometimes the cost this is prohibitive. Thus, our bugfix policy for Active support versions is two-pronged:

• For the most recent major version, we will provide bugfixes in the form of minor version releases.
• For versions under active support that are not the most recent major version, we will provide backports if at all possible, but may exclude certain bugfixes if the cost is prohibitive.

Supported Kubernetes versions

The officially supported Kubernetes versions for BEL releases are as follows:

Tested Kubernetes platforms

BEL should work on any relatively modern Kubernetes distribution. We actively test the latest release of BEL against specific platforms and environments.

Tested platforms for BEL enterprise-2.18.3 include: