VMS Help V73 Features, System Management Features, OpenVMS Cluster Systems, Warranted and Migration Support  *Conan The Librarian (sorry for the slow response - running on an old VAX)

    Compaq provides two levels of support, warranted and migration,
    for mixed-version and mixed-architecture OpenVMS Cluster systems.

    Warranted support means that Compaq has fully qualified the two
    versions coexisting in an OpenVMS Cluster and will answer all
    problems identified by customers using these configurations.

    Migration support is a superset of the Rolling Upgrade support
    provided in earlier releases of OpenVMS and is available for
    mixes that are not warranted. Migration support means that Compaq
    has qualified the versions for use together in configurations
    that are migrating in a staged fashion to a newer version of
    OpenVMS VAX or of OpenVMS Alpha. Problem reports submitted
    against these configurations will be answered by Compaq. However,
    in exceptional cases, Compaq may request that you move to a
    warranted configuration as part of answering the problem.

    Compaq supports only two versions of OpenVMS running in a cluster
    at the same time, regardless of architecture. Migration support
    helps customers move to warranted OpenVMS Cluster version mixes
    with minimal impact on their cluster environments.

    The following table shows the level of support provided for all
    possible version pairings.

    Table 4-2 Warranted and Migration Support

                             Alpha
                Alpha/VAX    V7.2-xxx/
                V7.3         VAX V7.2    Alpha/VAX V7.1

    Alpha/VAX   WARRANTED    Migration   Migration
    V7.3
    Alpha       Migration    WARRANTED   Migration
    V7.2-xxx/
    VAX V7.2
    Alpha/VAX   Migration    Migration   WARRANTED
    V7.1

    In a mixed-version cluster with OpenVMS Version 7.3, you must
    install remedial kits on earlier versions of OpenVMS. For OpenVMS
    Version 7.3, two new features, XFC and Volume Shadowing minicopy,
    cannot be run on any node in a mixed version cluster unless all
    nodes running earlier versions of OpenVMS have installed the
    required remedial kit or upgrade. Remedial kits are available
    now for XFC. An upgrade for systems running OpenVMS Version 7.2-
    xx that supports minicopy will be made available soon after the
    release of OpenVMS Version 7.3.

    For a complete list of required remedial kits, refer to the
    OpenVMS Version 7.3 Release Notes.