The Path from CentOS Linux to RHEL

You’re running business-critical workloads on CentOS Linux, and CentOS Linux 7 is going end of life. That’s a lot of hard decisions with not a lot of time, so in this piece I take a step back and walk through the options before demonstrating an in-place conversion from CentOS Linux 7 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 with Convert2RHEL.

A few things worth carrying away from this one:

• Start by taking inventory. Before you pick a path, ask what workloads you’re actually running. That answer shapes whether you rip and replace, containerize, or convert in place.
• The conversion is reversible until it isn’t. Convert2RHEL takes inventory, backs up configs, and disables CentOS repos before making any irreversible change. It even builds a second boot environment so the switch to RHEL 7 is clean.
• You can buy yourself time. With the third-party Linux migration offering you can receive RHEL 7 updates for up to four years past the CentOS Linux 7 end of life, running the same workloads on the same servers while you plan your next move.

The CentOS Linux 7 end of life may feel daunting, but it’s not insurmountable. Start planning your migration today.