CentOS end of support guidance

In December 2020, the CentOS community and Red Hat announced the sunset of CentOS. Red Hat also announced CentOS Stream, a new, upstream development platform for the CentOS community. For more information, see Transforming the development experience within CentOS.

What does this mean for CentOS users?

CentOS 6, 7, and 8 are the final releases of CentOS Linux. The end of support (EOS) dates for these versions are as follows:

  • CentOS 7 - June 30, 2024
  • CentOS 8 - December 31, 2021
  • CentOS 6 - November 30, 2020

If you have workloads that are running on CentOS versions that have reached their EOS date, your projects might be at risk because you are running VMs that are not receiving security updates. Google Cloud recommends that you migrate your workloads to a supported OS by using the migration options detailed in this document. For CentOS 7 users, Google Cloud recommends reviewing migration options and planning accordingly.

Impact on existing VMs

Your current VMs that are running CentOS are not affected by the EOS date for that version. After the EOS date, you can still start or stop your existing VMs that use these images.

However, after this date, the following changes take effect for CentOS versions that have reached EOS:

  • CentOS images for that version are marked as deprecated, but are still available.
  • If you need to create VMs using CentOS images after the EOS date, make copies of the images in your projects to ensure you can still use them.
  • For your existing CentOS based VMs, limited technical support is available through Google Cloud.

CentOS 7

As of June 30, 2024, the CentOS 7 operating system no longer receives software updates. For Google Cloud customers running CentOS 7, we recommend that you migrate your workloads to another operating system.

Long Term Support options

For maintaining your existing CentOS 7 systems on Google Cloud, there are long term support options from Google partners that provide secure packages, updates, and security patches to extend the lifetime of your CentOS environments. To receive CentOS technical support for your Google Cloud workloads, we recommend the following option:

  • CIQ Bridge: Extends CentOS 7 support by up to 3 years. CIQ, the exclusive provider of enterprise Rocky Linux for Google Cloud, offers access to a global repository of CentOS 7 packages, security updates, and patches to maintain business continuity and regulated industries compliance. In partnership with Google, CIQ is committed to helping Google Cloud customers by providing promotional discounts for CentOS 7 long term support.

CentOS 8

CentOS 8 reached its end of support (EOS) on December 31, 2021. This operating system no longer receives software updates or security patches.

If you have any remaining workloads on CentOS 8, we strongly recommend migrating them to a supported operating system to ensure you receive necessary security updates and support.

CentOS 6

CentOS 6 reached its end of support (EOS) on November 30, 2020. This operating system no longer receives software updates or security patches.

If you have any remaining workloads on CentOS 6, we strongly recommend migrating them to a supported operating system to ensure you receive necessary security updates and support.

Migration options

You can choose to either migrate your workloads that are running on CentOS to a compatible OS distribution, or you might choose an OS that uses a different system.

To migrate your workloads, complete the following steps:

  1. Decide on whether you want to move to a compatible OS or not.