Problem Statement

HCP relies on a shared management cluster to provision multiple tenant clusters. Restricting to an N-2 lifecycle for MCE/ACM effectively limits management cluster compatibility with OCP versions, potentially violating the OCP lifecycle policy if a single management cluster is used (which is for bin-packing).

Asking customers to create a separate management cluster to provision a newer version of OCP defeats the economics (added infrastructure overhead diminishes the value proposition of HCP for customers seeking consolidated management and resource optimization) .

Considering that a number of customers are still operating OCP 4.14, maintaining support for these existing HCP deployments while enabling the adoption of newer versions and recommending the right strategy (see below) is important now and in the future. 

The goal is to better align with the OCP[ lifecycle policy|https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/openshift], preserve the long-term value of HCP for our customers, and be consistent in our multi-cluster narrative.

More details here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sMKx57i9wIfg63RjnQmxGj7elULGiS9YZ_mjz9b5ZzE/edit?tab=t.0 

Key Objectives:

• Support existing HCP 4.14 customers: Provide a supported path for existing customers running OCP 4.14 on HCP + Fix the docs

• Enhance HCP flexibility and value: Explore how to enable customers to adopt newer OCP versions on HCP without requiring new management clusters, preserving the economic benefits of consolidated management (i.e., figure out the right tradeoff).

• Explore long-term strategic solutions: Investigate architectural changes and alternative approaches to address the ACM/MCE/HCP lifecycle challenge effectively in the future.