RHEL 7 End of Maintenance (EOM): Upgrade without upheaval

IT operations teams—from the leaders to the systems administrators—face more demands than ever. With all the must-dos on their to-do lists, upgrading their enterprise operating system (OS) is probably something they’d rather not deal with.

Moving on from an OS at enterprise scale takes a lot of work. But for organizations that depend on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7, it’s necessary. RHEL 7 reached the end of its maintenance period on June 30, 2024.

If the difficulty of an enterprise OS swap is your biggest obstacle, doing it may be simpler than you think, especially if you transition to RHEL 8 or RHEL 9. That’s an upgrade, not a migration, and Red Hat has created some tools that will help you along the way.

Before getting into those tools, however, let's look at why you should consider upgrading now.

RHEL 7 was state-of-the-art when we launched it in 2014, and steady updates have kept it current with customer needs. But with a more modern platform, you can operate more efficiently. 

RHEL 9 is made for modern, hybrid IT. To run complex workloads—including artificial intelligence (AI)—consistently from datacenter to cloud to edge, you need stability in and across all those environments. RHEL 9 offers this with a standardized, centralized management experience.

More specifically, newer versions of RHEL let you:

• Build RHEL images your way: Streamlined assembly of custom OS images allows you to choose which of the latest content and security updates you apply
• Unlock performance with Linux kernel 5.14 and new tools: Based on the upstream version of Linux kernel 5.14, RHEL 9 delivers improved performance for critical workloads
• Operate confidently at the edge: RHEL 9 offers improved workload resilience and more security capabilities while simplifying the inherent complexities of operating edge systems
• Embrace modern architectures: RHEL for ARM delivers enterprise Linux features with the ARM architecture, delivering a more reliable, high-performance platform and a consistent application environment across physical, virtual and cloud deployments
• Get systemwide visibility: Red Hat Insights uses predictive analytics to assess environments, identify and prioritize operational and security risks, and simplify operations. Insights also enables subscription tracking across hybrid cloud deployments and streamlines management of RHEL instances with enhanced subscription tracking
• Shape your app stack to your needs: As new features and capabilities are added to updated databases, web servers and application frameworks, you can choose the versions of popular applications and language runtimes that best fit your requirements
• Manage life cycle more efficiently: A RHEL subscription offers flexible yet stable life cycle options to better support your business and security requirements. Choose from multiple supported versions, upgrade on your schedule and adopt new features at your own pace
• Build with upstream communities and Red Hat partners: With RHEL 9, CentOS Stream became a part of the RHEL release pipeline. That means CentOS Stream code becomes the next minor release of RHEL, so you can contribute directly to RHEL through CentOS Stream and test your workloads before new releases

You’ll also get peace of mind. Major RHEL releases have a 10-year life cycle that includes 5 years of full support: bug fixes, security patches, software enhancements, hardware enablement and backports that are delivered via twice-a-year minor releases. As-needed updates roll out between minor releases, too.

For the last 5 years of the RHEL product life cycle, users still get critical security updates and urgent bug fixes. When you choose the latest version of RHEL, you standardize on a reliable foundation that’s built to last.

Whatever your upgrade path, it’s shorter and more straightforward with the right tools and expert guides who know how to use them. The Leapp utility lets you upgrade to a newer version of RHEL without going through a tedious reinstallation. Leapp preserves configurations and retains subscription information for affected machines. And Red Hat Consulting Services are always available if you need some extra help along the way.

Learn more about upgrading from RHEL 7

Upgrading isn’t your only option. Earlier this year, Red Hat offered RHEL 7.9 users the chance to extend life cycle support for another four years. I’ll dig deeper into the pluses and minuses of extended life cycle support—and how to get it—in a future article.