Convert2RHEL adds official support for Oracle Linux conversions

Due to interest from Red Hat customers, we are pleased to announce that our Convert2RHEL utility officially supports conversions of Oracle Linux systems to fully supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). 

In our Convert2RHEL announcement in April of this year we announced support for CentOS Linux to RHEL conversions. Convert2RHEL is a powerful tool that minimizes the need for costly redeployment projects and reduces administrative burden by maintaining existing OS customizations, configurations, and preferences during the conversion. 

Over the last several years, the Convert2RHEL utility has been used with great success by Red Hat Consulting, partners, and customers to convert thousands of Oracle Linux systems to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Convert2RHEL has been historically popular with large customers in the retail, financial, and digital service provider industries. The recent enhancements and official Red Hat support makes it a valuable tool for customers of all sizes and industries. More details on using Convert2RHEL as a self-service tool are provided in the Red Hat Customer support policy. 

Why customers move to RHEL

Customers who have converted from Oracle Linux tell us they are looking for deployment flexibility, dedicated support, and a broad ecosystem of vendors, hardware, and cloud providers.

Red Hat develops and tests Red Hat Enterprise Linux, contributes directly to the community, and combines engineering and support teams for product development and case management. Customers receive security patches, enhancements, and new features directly from the source. This experience benefits customers in several ways: 

• Increased visibility and control with Red Hat Insights.

• Predictable product life cycle cadences and extended support offerings.

• Extensive knowledge base, troubleshooting articles and comprehensive documentation.

• Security certifications for specific versions of RHEL including FIPS 140-2 validation and Common Criteria Certification.

• Thousands of certified hardware and software vendors.

• Certified for leading cloud platforms.

• Reduce unplanned downtime with live kernel patching.

• In-place upgrade to newer versions of RHEL.

Learn more about Convert2RHEL

In addition to the Convert2RHEL FAQ, we have released official documentation for users who are converting from an RPM-based Linux distribution to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and a public-facing Red Hat Enterprise Linux migration process landing page to help guide your journey. 

RHEL customers can check out the Migration Center in the Red Hat Customer Portal for additional resources as well. We recommend that those with complex migration projects or those wanting to accelerate their migration engage Red Hat Consulting services experts to help them convert key applications and workloads.

Get started with Convert2RHEL today

Quick Start instructions are available in "An Introduction to Convert2RHEL: Now officially supported to convert RHEL-like systems to RHEL."  The same Quick Start instructions will also work for Oracle Linux conversions.

Migrate to RHEL at scale

For large scale conversions and ongoing management of large RHEL environments, Red Hat Satellite can help you synchronize and distribute RHEL content and updates to your environment.  Instructions for using Convert2RHEL with Satellite are explained in Steps for converting from CentOS Linux with Convert2RHEL and Red Hat Satellite.

Note 1: While not supported by Red Hat due to RHEL 6 being outside of the maintenance phase of the life cycle, guidance for conversions from Oracle Linux 6 is provided in How to convert from CentOS Linux 6 or Oracle Linux 6 to RHEL. Guidance is provided for upgrading from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7 on the Red Hat Customer Portal.