Photo by Chris Briggs on Unsplash

Automating migration to openEuler

The Fast Migration Path

For years, CentOS was the distribution of choice for system administrators that needed to run a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) compatible system, but could not afford a full support contract with Red Hat. CentOS, a fully compatible clone built from RHEL sources, functioned as a drop-in replacement for RHEL. CentOS promised an enterprise-grade Linux distribution that was available for anyone regardless of their budget.

Red Hat eventually became a sponsor for CentOS in 2014 [1], in a movement the community found controversial at the time. The sponsorship agreement was, according to LWN.net [2], a de facto acquisition of CentOS by Red Hat, since Red Hat took ownership of the CentOS trademarks and the CentOS governing board consisted of a majority of Red Hat employees.

In 2020, Red Hat unilaterally discontinued CentOS development, setting end-of-life (EOL) dates for the active versions much earlier than the community expected. According to Red Hat, CentOS users had no need to worry, because they could use the new CentOS Stream instead. Sadly, CentOS Stream is CentOS in name only. While the original CentOS was a RHEL drop-in replacement, CentOS Stream is an upstream development version of Red Hat, which made serious users wary of migrating.

The last CentOS supported release, CentOS 7, reached EOL on June 30, 2024. If you are still using CentOS today, you are running an unsupported operating system. The good news is that many alternatives have arisen in response to CentOS' demise, so system administrators have plenty of  migration options.

One such option, openEuler from the OpenAtom foundation, offers an Enterprise Linux-like system for servers and cloud environments. It boasts a number of unique utilities, such as iSulad, a lightweight container runtime daemon; A-Tune, an AI-powered performance tuning tool for servers; and the

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF

Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy ADMIN Magazine

SINGLE ISSUES

Print Issues

Digital Issues

 

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Print Subs

Digisubs

 

TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS

US / Canada

UK / Australia