Red Hat Offering Up To 4 Years Extra Support For RHEL7

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Red Hat Offering Up To 4 Years Extra Support For RHEL7

This year already marks ten years since the introduction of RHEL 7. While the Red Hat Enterprise Linux support period is typically 10 years, for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 they have decided to extend that by up to four years with Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS)...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/RHEL-7-Four-Years-ELS-Support

[panikal]

This was announced last summer...did something change? The blog post linked is still the original announcement.

[Michael]

This was announced last summer...did something change? The blog post linked is still the original announcement.

Hmm good catch. Not sure if something edited in the post or what but appearing as new today on the Red Hat blog RSS feed.

[toves]

I recall with RHEL4, a long time ago, extended support was expensive. I think our dept was quoted ca $1000 per system per year.
Probably not so critical then as the main applications postfix, dovecot, clamav, isc-bind, isc-dhcpd, apache, squid etc etc and library dependencies like openssl were all (re)built from the upstream sources in response to any security fixes. (Originally had to be done anyway for the Unix systems previously used.)
Today this would be considered decidedly odd, at least for non-Gentoo systems.
Upgrading from *EL7 to *EL8 doesn't seem to have too many pitfalls. Going directly to *EL9 is probably for the more courageous.
All things considered today I would have to seriously consider whether sticking with RH/IBM in the longer term, at least as a monoculture, would neccessarily be in the site's long term interest. (There are options and heterogeneity has benefits as well as costs.)

[cynic]

does this apply to CentOS too? Can't find any definitive answer to this question (but it looks like more no than yes)

[michaelo2]

does this apply to CentOS too? Can't find any definitive answer to this question (but it looks like more no than yes)

Unless something I'm not aware of changed, this doesn't apply neither CentOS or EPEL.

Technically RHEL-ELS RPMs can be installed on top of CentOS, but CentOS is not supported by RH, so that would mean only updates.

[michaelo2]

This ELS will be the culmination of many years of engineering to produce RHEL with set known dates. Good work Red Hat!

Since RHEL8 minor releases are released every 6 months and once it reaches 8.10 (in a few week!) RHEL8 will stay in that minor for 5 years + ELS years (2? 4?). Enterprises love this. For previous releases this was not that clear when a minor would be released and the "it will be released when ready" made maintenance sometimes tricky.

The migration from RHEL7 to RHEL8 has improved a lot also. A friend is reporting thousands of systems being upgraded using Leapp.

[mxan]

does this apply to CentOS too? Can't find any definitive answer to this question (but it looks like more no than yes)

The definitive answer is no. RHEL's extended lifecycles have never applied to CentOS, and even if CentOS (or any other rebuild) wanted to get the updates, they have never been able to because Red Hat have never made the (S)RPMs available to the general public, only to subscribers.

Red Hat's extended lifecycles are nothing new by the way, RHEL 6 has extended support until July 1st of this year; RHEL 5 had it until November 30th 2020, RHEL 4 until March 31st 2017, etc.