TL;DR - A standardized layered component hotfix process is being introduced. Please share with teams for scrutiny, testing and feedback.

As Red Hat has expanded its offerings on OpenShift Container Platform (OCP), more and more layered products and offerings have become part of the ecosystem. As with everything Red Hat ships; the ability to deliver fixes to customers quickly is of key importance to the value proposition we provide.

In some situations waiting for the next scheduled or planned release (as defined by the product/offering) isn’t viable for customers (as this could be weeks into the future), and thus an Accelerated Fix (colloquially known as a Hot Fix) is or can be requested, and Red Hat traditionally does everything it can (within commercially reasonable means) to accommodate.

In an effort to unify or standardize what / how administrators of OCP clusters can consume and maintain these offerings on OCP, the Portfolio Enablement and Container Factory teams at Red Hat have been hard at work scoping and defining a unified or standardized Accelerated Fix (Hot Fix) process for Operators:

https://docs.engineering.redhat.com/display/CFC/Hotfix_Process

Note: This process may not work for every Operator Team (product/offering).

Knowing where/how this can be adapted to maintain some uniformity for customers is a key aspect of socializing this.

While teams have been hard at work defining a general process; we are just now at a stage where proper testing/vetting is needed by layered product/component teams.

As such we are sharing the process details on how to build and deliver hotfixes via this process; in hopes to solicit candidates and feedback on the experience of building and delivering an Accelerated Fix (Hot Fix) to a customer using the process.

Note: this process is not being extended to ISV’s and Partners (or those operator indexes).

As members of PLM who interact with many operator teams; please share this with your teams and stakeholders; to help disseminate the information, and if you see a customer situation arise where this process could be piloted please contact Bryan Ramos to get the process started.

If you have any questions, those of us in cc who have led this working group to define / structure this process are happy to help answer questions.

: Ben Parees <bparees@redhat.com>, Daniel Messer <dmesser@redhat.com>, Davis Phillips <dphillip@redhat.com>, Pedro Navarro Perez <pnavarro@redhat.com>, Tim Waugh <twaugh@redhat.com>, Rob Szumski <rszumski@redhat.com>