Red Hat Consulting: CentOS to RHEL Migration Assessment

As experts in Red Hat technology, Red Hat Consulting ensures that customers derive optimal value from their technology investments. We prioritize enabling our clients to initiate projects efficiently, delivering tangible results promptly. This assessment focuses on imparting a clear understanding of the technology, emphasizing correct initial implementation for streamlined scalability. This tailored offering provides customers with a personalized framework for the effective planning and analysis for converting systems running on CentOS to a supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux for systems running on AWS or on-premises that want to be migrated to the AWS cloud.

Updates and releases of CentOS Linux 8 were discontinued as of December 31, 2021 and will be discontinued for CentOS Linux 7 on June 30, 2024. Organizations running that OS must migrate to a new operating system to continue receiving updates, patches, and new features.

Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® has a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) over time compared to an unpaid, unsupported operating system—and it streamlines the conversion, maintenance, and overall management for your IT team. Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers full life cycle support, a large partner ecosystem, and built-in security features.

Because CentOS Linux was derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux sources, users migrating to RHEL can continue to use many of the same techniques and elements with minimal training, while gaining more features, tools, support, and value.

Red Hat Consulting’s assessment approach focuses on three core areas:

• Strategy: We delve deep into the business objectives behind the migration and modernization of CentOS systems. Red Hat consultants ensure clear timelines and identify the key stakeholders involved. This stage also includes reviewing and tailoring system requirements and addressing Standard Operating Environment (SOE) needs.

• Workloads & Applications: Through dedicated workshops with application and platform teams, we gain insights into existing workloads, dependencies, team structures, and operational processes. This helps in effectively mapping OS dependencies for the applications on their current platforms.

• Platform & Infrastructure: Our team understands the intricacies of platforms integrated with the operating systems, including their architectures, cloud interfaces, SLAs, and customizations. We also factor in integrations like monitoring, backup, metrics, logging, repositories, authentication, and other ITSM processes.

At the conclusion of the migration assessment, customers will come away with the essential tools and methodologies to confidently plan and execute the in-place upgrade for systems with critical workloads on a robust, high-performance platform within the hybrid cloud.