In previous blogs, we have discussed the great improvements available in Oracle Solaris 11.4, and how important it is for customers to plan for a move to Oracle Solaris 11.4 as quickly as they can. We’re announcing that after January 2021 Oracle will only offer new fixes for Oracle Solaris 11.3 through Extended Support.

Typically Oracle stops releasing Support Readiness Updates (SRUs) for one Oracle Solaris 11 update shortly after the next one is released, we’ve done this with Oracle Solaris 11.0, 11.1, and 11.2. This means that if customers wanted fixes they were encouraged to move to the newest SRU of the latest Oracle Solaris 11 release.

However in the case of Oracle Solaris 11.3 we choose a different path. Mainly because Oracle Solaris 11.4 is not supported on SPARC hardware released before 2011, we wanted to give customers a transition period to update to Oracle Solaris 11.4.

Customers under Oracle Premier Support have had access to quarterly patch updates called Limited Support Updates (LSUs) to Oracle Solaris 11.3 for over 2 years. These LSUs are limited in scope, and solely focused on delivering fixes deemed absolutely necessary. For instance, they are often limited by how far behind Oracle Solaris 11.3 is on things like the FOSS versions and how far behind the Oracle Solaris 11.3 kernel is behind Oracle Solaris 11.4, which means we cannot bring all the functionality and security fixes available with Oracle Solaris 11.4 into the Oracle Solaris 11.3 LSUs.

Therefore customers should move to Oracle Solaris 11.4 as quickly as they can. This will not only for security reasons, but also due to the many features in the Oracle Solaris 11.4 OS that will allow you to run your systems and applications with more simplicity and insight. The Oracle Solaris 11.3 LSUs are available only to bridge the gap to this move.

The Oracle Solaris 11.3 LSU planned for January 2021 will be the final update available under Oracle Premier Support. After this point Oracle Solaris 11.3 will enter Extended Support for 3 years until January 2024.

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