CentOS end of support guidance
In December 2020, the CentOS community and Red Hat announced thesunset ofCentOS.Red Hat also announced CentOS Stream, a new, upstream development platform forthe CentOS community. For more information, seeTransforming the development experience within CentOS.
What does this mean for CentOS users?
CentOS 7 and 8 are the final releases of CentOS Linux. The end of support (EOS)dates for CentOS 7 and 8 are as follows:
- CentOS 8 - December 31, 2021
- CentOS 7 - June 30, 2024
If you have workloads that are running on these CentOS versions, youmight want to review what options are available to you on Google Cloud and startmigrating your workloads.
CentOS 7
As of June 30, 2024, the CentOS 7 operating system no longer receives softwareupdates. For Google Cloud customers running CentOS 7, we recommend thatyou migrate your workloads to another operating system.
Long Term Support options
For maintaining your existing CentOS 7 systems on Google Cloud, there arelong 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, werecommend the following option:
- CIQ Bridge:Extends CentOS 7 support by up to 3 years. CIQ, the exclusive provider ofenterprise Rocky Linux for Google Cloud, offers access to a globalrepository of CentOS 7 packages, security updates, and patches to maintainbusiness continuity and regulated industries compliance. In partnership withGoogle, CIQ is committed to helping Google Cloud customers by providingpromotional discounts for CentOS 7 long term support.
Migration options
You can choose to either migrate your workloads that are running on CentOS to acompatible OS distribution, or you might choose an OS that uses a differentsystem.
To migrate your workloads, complete the following steps:
Decide on whether you want to move to a compatible OS or not.
- For a list of compatible operating systems, seeCentOScompatible operating systems.
- For a list of other operating systems that you might consider,seeOther operating systems.
To move from CentOS to the new OSes, you have the following options:
- Create a new VM with the new OS and redeploy your workloads.Google recommends using this option.
Migrate your workloads to a new OS using conversion tools.Choose one of the following:
- Use the migration tool that is available from the OSdistribution that you want to migrate to. While a few communitytools might be available for converting your workloads from CentOSto another distribution, Google Cloud does not provide or supportany of these conversion tools.
- Use the
migrate2rockytool provided by CIQ to convert CentOS to Rocky Linux. Forinstructions on how to use this tool and the supported operatingsystems, see theRocky Linux documentation. - Use the
Convert2RHELtool provided by Red Hat to convert CentOS to Red HatEnterprise Linux. For instructions on how to use this tool and thesupported operating systems, see theConvert2RHEL documentation.
Append the relevant OS license strings. For a list of OS license strings on Compute Engine,seeOperating systems details.To append the license string, seeAppend and validate a user license.
CentOS compatible operating systems
The following table summarizes the list of CentOS compatible operating systemsthat you can migrate to on Google Cloud.
| Distribution | Image available on Google Cloud | Image license cost | Support models |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)* | Yes | Premiumimage pricing | Commercial support (providedby Google Cloud) |
| RockyLinux | Yes | None | |
| AlmaLinux | Yes | None | |
| CentOSStream | Yes | None | Community support |
| SUSE Multi-Linux Support (SMLS) | No** | Premium image pricing | Commercial support (provided by SUSE) |
*RHEL on demand images are available onGoogle Cloud. We also support RHEL Cloud Access (BYOS) subscription based gold images.For more information about RHEL's Cloud Access program, seeRed Hat Cloud Access.
**If you use SMLS for your existing instances, you don't need a new image because SUSE offers an in-place conversion. With an in-place conversion, you will receive enterprise support from SUSE regardless of the OS distribution of the original boot image.
Promotional offers from Red Hat
Red Hat in partnership with Google is committed to helping you migrate fromCentOS to RHEL. To help with this migration, we are providing promotional offersto qualified customers subject to approval from Red Hat. If you are interestedin learning more about the RHEL promotional offers, contact your Google Cloudaccount representative.
Promotional offers from CIQ for CentOS
In partnership with Google, CIQ is providing promotional discounts for long term support for all CentOS customers on Google Cloud.CIQ Bridge can help ensure your CentOS systems remain secure, compliant and fully operational for up to 3 years.
Other operating systems
If you do not require a CentOS compatible operating system, the followingoptions are available.
| Distribution | Image available on Google Cloud | Image license cost | Support models |
|---|---|---|---|
| UbuntuLTS | Yes | None | The following options are available: |
| Debian | Yes | None | Community support |
| OpenSUSE | Yes | None | Community support |
| UbuntuPro | Yes | Premiumimage pricing | Commercial support (GoogleCloud) |
| SLES | Yes | Premiumimage pricing | Commercial support (GoogleCloud) |
Using the CentOS Vault
Caution: The CentOS vault is a snapshot of older trees that have been removed from themain CentOS servers. It doesn't receive updates. CentOS doesn't support usingthe vault and Google doesn't recommend its usage.As part of the CentOS deprecation, all content was removed from from the CentOS 7repositories. If it is necessary to install new packages on an existingCentOS 7 system, you can switch repositories from the supportedmirror.centos.org to the unsupportedvault.centos.org.
To switch to the CentOS vault repositories, you can run the following command:
sed -i -e s/mirror.centos.org/vault.centos.org/g -e s/^#baseurl=/baseurl=/g -e s/^mirrorlist=/#mirrorlist=/g /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-*.repo
You can also provide this command during VM creation by using astartup script.
For more information about the CentOS vault, see theCentOS vault readme.
What's next
- Learn more aboutimages on Compute Engine.
- Learn more about theoperating systemsthat are available on Compute Engine.
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Last updated 2025-12-15 UTC.