Couchbase Support Policy

2. Version Support

2.1 Each Major and Minor Release will be supported for the longer of i) eighteen (18) months from its general availability release date; or ii) 6 months after the next Major Release. After this date the release will be considered to have reached End-of-Life (EOL) support. Beyond this point customers should have migrated all production instances to a fully supported version. Reasonable efforts technical support will continue to be provided for EOL versions for 1 year past the EOL date. After this time a customer should pursue any need for further product technical support with the sales account team. Any product issue newly identified in an EOL version will be scheduled for resolution in a version that is not in EOL status.

2.2 Maintenance Releases are used to support both Major Releases and Minor Releases. Couchbase will generally fix errors only in the most current Maintenance Release level of the Software. Couchbase’s support team will direct Licensee to existing fixes/patches and workarounds that are applicable to the reported case. Couchbase’s support team may direct Licensee to upgrade to a more current release of the Software.

2.3 Definitions.  Couchbase Software versions are identified according to the following format: “x.y.z”. “Major Release” is identified by the “x” in the above example.  “Minor Release” is identified by the “y” in the above example. “Maintenance Release” is identified by the “z” in the above example. “End-of-Life” means software which is no longer supported for the resolution of a newly identified product issue.

2a. This section 2a applies only to Couchbase Server version 5.0 (and subsequent versions), Couchbase Lite version 2.0 (and subsequent versions), Couchbase Sync Gateway version 2.0 (and subsequence versions)

2a.1 Each Major release will be supported for the longer of i) thirty (30) months from its general availability release date (“30 Month Floor”) or ii) 6 months after the next Major Release.  After this date the release will be considered to have reached End-of-Life (EOL).  Beyond this point customers should have migrated all production instances to a fully supported version.  Reasonable efforts technical support will continue to be provided for EOL versions for 18 months past the EOL date.  After this time the version is considered to have reached End Of Support (EOS).  If a customer is seeking assistance with a version that has arrived at EOS, it should be discussed with the sales account team.  Any product issue newly identified in an EOL version will be scheduled for resolution in a version that is not in EOL status.

2a.2 Minor releases will contain many important fixes in addition to improvements and minor feature additions.  Minor releases are considered to be part of the major release family.   A Minor release does not extend the 30 Month Floor commitment noted in section 2a.1 above.  For example the 5.0 release family is supported through 30 months of the GA date of 5.0.   “In family minor releases such as 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 etc. are fully supported through 30 months of the GA date of the Major version 5.0.  Note that Couchbase will cease to provide maintenance releases for any version in a major release family after 6 months of the following Minor or Major release.  

2a.3 Maintenance Releases are used to support both Major Releases and Minor Releases. Couchbase will generally fix errors only in the most current Maintenance Release level of the Software. Couchbase’s support team will direct customer to existing fixes/patches and workarounds that are applicable to the reported case. Couchbase’s support team may direct customer to upgrade to a more current release of the Software.  Maintenance will cease for a given release 6 months after the successive maintenance release.   For example maintenance releases for 5.0 (e.g., 5.0.1) will cease 6 months after the release of the next Minor release or Major release (in that example, 6 months after the release of 5.1 or 6.0).

2a.4 Definitions.  Couchbase Software versions are identified according to the following format: “x.y.z”. “Major Release” is identified by the “x” in the above example.  “Minor Release” is identified by the “y” in the above example. “Maintenance Release” is identified by the “z” in the above example. “End-of-Life” means software which is no longer supported for the resolution of a newly identified product issue.

3. General

3.1 Issues will be reasonably assigned an appropriate level (P1, P2 or P3) in agreement between Couchbase and our customer in line with the definitions of those priorities.

P1: Software failures on a production system that cause complete loss or severe outage of service, resulting in a mission-critical business application being down or non-operational.  

P2: Software failures on a production system that cause partial loss of service impacting business operations. Operations can continue in a restricted fashion and a workaround may be used to restore functionality. As to a non-production system, a software failure that causes a complete loss or severe outage of service where there is a time-sensitive impact to a planned production deployment.  

P3: All non-time sensitive requests including product functionality issues in Development or Test, feature requests and documentation clarifications.

3.2 Licensee acknowledges that the time required for resolution of issues may vary depending on the complexity of each problem, including, without limitation, the nature of the issue, the extent and accuracy of information available about the issue, and the level of Licensee’s cooperation and responsiveness in providing materials, information, access and support reasonably required by Couchbase to achieve issue resolution.

3.3 Support Exclusions.  Couchbase will have no obligation to provide support services to Licensee in the event that (i) the Software has been changed, modified or damaged by Licensee or anyone other than Couchbase, (ii) the problem is caused by Licensee’s misuse of the Software, a hardware malfunction, or other causes beyond the reasonable control of Couchbase, (iii) the problem is due to or attributable to third party software or operating systems not provided by Couchbase (including APIs and data formats not included in the Software), or (iv) Licensee is not running a supported version. In addition, the support services do not include Licensee’s use of the Software other than described in the Documentation.

4. End-of-Life schedule

(End-of-Life occurs after the last day of the "End of Life Date" month specified below)