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On June 30, 2024, CentOS Linux 7 will reach End of Life (EOL) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (RHEL 7) will reach End of Maintenance (EOM). Find out what this means for you and how Red Hat can ease your migration.

Overview

Migrating to Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® can make a big difference in the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of your IT operations, especially if you qualify for low-cost or no-cost options. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) over time, streamlining conversion, maintenance, and overall management for your IT team. Converting to Red Hat Enterprise Linux also means enjoying life-cycle support, a large partner ecosystem, and built-in security features covering bases you might not have even known needed covering.

Because CentOS Linux was derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux sources, users migrating to Red Hat can continue to use many of the same techniques and elements with minimal training, while also gaining more features, tools, support, and value.

CentOS migration. Video migration: 2:43

Challenge

Updates and releases of CentOS Linux 8 were discontinued as of December 31, 2021 and will be discontinued for CentOS Linux 7 on June 30, 2024. As a result, organizations running CentOS Linux must migrate to a new operating system to continue receiving updates, patches, and new features.
 
Cost-wise, it may be tempting to go with an unpaid, unsupported OS. But many rebuilds—especially free versions—are unproven, lack security certifications, and require additional staff and budget to support. 

Solution

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a fully supported production-grade operating system (OS) available through a subscription and in the cloud. It’s the best long-term migration option for production use.
 
If your organization needs an IT environment with a reliable foundation to achieve cost and business efficiencies, you need more than the bits and code that make up an operating system. You need defined maintenance and update schedules, full support, security resources, a large ecosystem of certified partners, and long-term roadmaps to ensure stability and success. 

Migration options: Low-cost & no-cost Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Developer Subscription for Teams

The Red Hat Developer Subscription for Teams provides development teams within organizations already running other Red Hat technologies access to self-supported* Red Hat Enterprise Linux at no-cost with enterprise and professional support add-ons available. Standardize on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and empower teams across your organization to build, test, and advance applications on the same reliable platform used for production workloads. 

Qualifications: Red Hat customers. Development usage only. 

Red Hat Developer Subscription for Individuals

The Red Hat Developer Subscription for Individuals is for any individual developer and provides access to the most relevant resources to speed productivity including product bits and activations, how-to videos, demos, guides, and documentation. The subscription may be used for demos, prototyping, QA, and more. It is designed for personal servers, home labs, small open source communities, as a no-cost, self-supported subscription for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Qualifications: Any individual developer (not for use in organizations).

Red Hat Academic Program

The Red Hat Academic Program has historically offered a low-cost option for academic institutions. A broad range of research and academia-related organizations can enter Red Hat’s academic program, making it easier to access, run, and maintain Red Hat Enterprise Linux to suit your unique needs—whether it’s simply running a web server or supporting a high-performance computing (HPC) environment.

For more information, email redhat-academic@redhat.com.

Red Hat Open Source Infrastructure Subscription

This no-cost option is for organizations that are open source projects or non-profit organizations that support the production of open source software and require more Red Hat Enterprise Linux instances than are allowed under the individual developer subscription*. If a software project is sponsored by a for-profit company, Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions can only be used for independent project infrastructure. The organization must also produce or support the production of software distributed under an approved license to qualify.

For more information, email rosi-program@redhat.com.

Do it yourself migration

Do it yourself with Convert2RHEL, a command line utility that enables you to quickly convert from CentOS Linux to fully supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Avoid costly redeployment projects with this streamlined tool that maintains your existing customizations, configurations, and preferences during migration. Gain the control, confidence, and freedom you need to migrate quickly and start taking advantage of everything a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription has to offer. Convert2RHEL is now fully supported by Red Hat.

Red Hat Consulting

Engage Red Hat Consulting to help accelerate your migration. Red Hat experts bring proven knowledge and experience to your migration project. We can help you identify and convert key applications and workloads, and we mentor and enable you to continue confidently afterward. 

  • Red Hat Open Source Infrastructure Subscription is not intended for individual developers, Red Hat customers or partners, or for governmental entities or organizations, hospitals or healthcare organizations, schools, academic institutions, or universities, or NGOs and other non-profits outside of the open source ecosystem. Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions are subject to Red Hat’s Enterprise Agreement and do not allow for selling, distributing and/or rebranding the Red Hat Subscription Services. These subscriptions will be unsupported by default, but may be considered for support pending additional qualifications.

Icon-Red_Hat-Media_and_documents-Quotemark_Open-B-Red-RGB Having [an] integrated solution approach provides us with greater operational excellence because we can see what somebody is building. We have the environment captured and have visibility about what went into it for repeatability, reproducibility, scalability, and lots of other benefits.

TJ

Cloud and Infrastructure Architecture

Keep learning about Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Webinar

10 things to consider when migrating from CentOS Linux to a new operating system

Learn 5 critical factors for choosing an operating system, 3 risks associated with free Linux distributions, and 2 ways to limit disruption during a migration.

Datasheet

Simplify your migration with Red Hat Enterprise Linux migration tools

Streamline your CentOS Linux migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux from start to finish. Red Hat Enterprise Linux migration tools mitigate risk and reduce complexity, whether you choose to do it on your own or collaborate with us.

IDC Whitepaper

The value of a Red Hat subscription

According to an IDC research paper, organizations that purchase Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions versus using a free, unsupported OS end up realizing value that IDC quantifies as being worth nearly 7 times (573% three-year ROI) the investment costs.

Assessment

A Linux infrastructure planning assessment

Tell us about your top priorities across the topics of security, automation, cloud, containerization, and migration and we’ll deliver an actionable set of recommendations that are intended to help you fully maximize your technology investment in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Start using Red Hat Enterprise Linux