CentOS 7 reaches End-of-Life status (EoL) on June 30, 2024. In short, this means that CentOS 7 will no longer receive support in the form of patches, bug fixes, etc. Since CentOS 7 can potentially become vulnerable after reaching EoL status, we recommend upgrading to a newer operating system. There are two options: reinstalling your server or performing an in-place upgrade. We explain these options further in this article.
- At the end of 2020, CentOS transitioned to CentOS Stream. In our article 'What is CentOS Stream', we explain this further.
- Regardless of your choice, it is probably easiest to choose an operating system that closely aligns with your experience with CentOS 7. For this, we recommend Rocky Linux or AlmaLinux, but you are free to choose other Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)-based options as well. See our article on RHEL-based systems at TransIP.
Reinstallation
As the name suggests, during a reinstallation you install a new operating system. During this process, all data on your server will be deleted. How to reinstall an operating system from the TransIP control panel is explained in our guide 'Reinstalling an operating system on your VPS'.
Advantages:
- You have complete freedom in choosing an operating system. For example, instead of CentOS 7, you can choose something entirely different, like Ubuntu.
- You have the assurance that the software you install after the reinstallation is compatible with the operating system.
Disadvantages:
- A reinstallation is a relatively extensive process, especially if you use a lot of software and have a lot of data to transfer: Before the reinstallation, you need to back up all your data. After the reinstallation, you need to reinstall the software you used and manually restore the data.
In-place upgrade
During an in-place upgrade, you use a few commands to upgrade your operating system to a newer one, for example, from CentOS 7 to AlmaLinux 8 or Rocky Linux 8. For the in-place upgrade, you can use the Elevate tool developed by AlmaLinux. This allows you to perform an in-place upgrade from CentOS 7 to version 8 and then to 9 of one of the following operating systems:
Advantages:
- You retain all your data.
- There is a good chance that you do not need to reinstall your software.
Disadvantages:
- You are somewhat limited in your choice of operating systems.
- There is a very small chance that after the upgrade, some software on your VPS installed before the upgrade may not be compatible with your new operating system. However, this mainly concerns obscure packages that you compile yourself and not so much packages from the standard repositories. In general, the chance of this happening is negligible because the Elevate tool checks this well before the actual upgrade.
Do you want to perform an in-place upgrade of your operating system as described in this section? Then use our guide 'Upgrading CentOS 7 to AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, CentOS Stream, Oracle Linux, or EuroLinux'.