Convert CentOS Linux 7.9 to RHEL 7.9 on AWS with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Third Party Linux Migration with ELS

Your choice of a Linux distribution has a significant impact on the efficiency, performance, security, and cost of your IT environment and your business. Organizations that use CentOS Linux, a freely available, community-supported Linux distribution, currently face a choice. The CentOS Project is discontinuing updates and releases of CentOS Linux 7 on June 30 2024. As a result, CentOS Linux users must migrate to a new operating system to continue receiving updates, patches, and new features.

CentOS Linux is functionally comparable to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and applications running on CentOS Linux are binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. As a result, the need to retrain staff, and the cost to migrate to Red Hat Enterprise Linux is minimal. Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Third Party Linux Migration with ELS provides access to the best practices and technical tools to aid in your migration. This includes the Convert2RHEL tool that performs an in-place conversion of a CentOS server while maintaining customizations, configurations, preferences, policies, and more. Once a subscription is purchased, the migration becomes a streamlined, straight-forward process. You can continue to use your existing instance without having to re-create your application stack.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Third Party Linux Migration with ELS also gives you additional time to plan your migration. Technically, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 will not receive updates after June 30 2024, but the Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS) add-on allows your servers to continue to receive updates after June 30 2024 for up to four additional years.

This offering is competitively priced and is likely to be comparable to what you would spend on a public cloud if you were going through a third party to obtain CentOS Linux updates and maintenance.

Example migration

As an example of the conversion process, consider a scenario in which you have CentOS 7.9 running on AWS, and you have targeted a move to RHEL 7.9 on AWS. In this scenario, we will convert CentOS Linux 7.9 running on a EC2 instance to RHEL 7.9 using the Convert2RHEL tooling.

$ cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS Linux release 7.9.2009 (Core)

The example machine used in this article is running CentOS Linux 7.9 EC2 instance with 4 vCPUs.

Make the purchase on AWS Marketplace

To purchase Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Third Party Linux Migration with ELS, go to AWS Marketplace and look for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 for Third Party Linux Migration with ELS.

1. Click on the orange View purchase options button in the upper right.

2. Usage is measured by the number of vCPUs used per hour, and the cost is $0.009/unit. This software is priced along a consumption dimension, and  your bill is determined by the number of units you use. Click on the Subscribe button to purchase the subscription.

To continue, set up your account and complete your registration by clicking on the Set up your account button in the upper right corner of the registration screen.

3. After registration, you're taken to your cloud.redhat.com account. Sign in, and then click on the Connect accounts button.

4. This takes you to the https://access.redhat.com/articles/7020934 article, which gives you detailed instructions on getting started with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 for Third Party Linux Migration.
5. Follow the instructions provided in Getting Started with Red Hat Enterprise Linux  for Third Party Linux Migration, and then run the convert2rhel utility. After you're done, you can see that CentOS Linux 7.9 has successfully migrated to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.9.

$ sudo convert2rhel --org 1234567890 --config-file /etc/convert2rhel.ini -y -r
convert2rhel command used:
/bin/convert2rhel --org ***** --config-file /etc/convert2rhel.ini -y -r
[...]
Updating RHSM custom facts collected during the conversion.
RHSM custom facts uploaded successfully.
Conversion successful!
Connection to ec2-12-345-67-089.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com closed by remote host.
Connection to ec2-12-345-67-089.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com closed.
$ cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.9 (Maipo)

Easy migration

Red Hat offers several migration paths and programs to ease your transition from CentOS Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. In this blog, we have demonstrated how the Convert2RHEL utility, part of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 for Third-Party Linux Migration offering on AWS  Marketplace, performs an in-place conversion of CentOS Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems.