CentOS Stream 10(ARM64) Minimal and Hardened

This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for a pre-hardened, AWS-optimized image with verifiable evidence and maintenance. Based on CentOS Stream 10 ARM64, this AMI is hardened, tuned for Amazon EC2 workloads, and equipped with a complete evidence pack and Software Bill of Materials (SBOM).

System Footprint & Reliability Optimization:

1. Minimal Footprint: Built on a minimal OS installation to reduce the attack surface and remove unnecessary packages.

2. Storage Layout: Configured with a streamlined 10 GB root (/) partition layout to minimize disk footprint while ensuring core system operation.

3. Validation Testing: Functional verification conducted on clean AMI launches through multi-round integration testing, verifying complete software lifecycle operations with SELinux enforcing.

AWS Network & Kernel Tuning:

1. Network Stack: TCP BBR congestion control with fair queueing, increased connection backlogs, buffer adjustments, and MTU probing enabled.

2. System Tuning: Red Hat tuned daemon active with a custom cloud profile, custom transparent hugepages (madvise), and modified memory/EBS writeback parameters.

3. EC2 Integration: Configured with NVMe I/O timeouts, Amazon Time Sync (chrony), IRQ balance daemon, and size-capped persistent journald logging.

Operational Tools

1. Preinstalled Tools: AWS SSM Session Manager enabled, CloudWatch Agent installed (disabled by default).

Security:

1. Security Hardening: SELinux enforcing with the targeted policy, ICMP redirects disabled, unused kernel modules blocked, and a shorter SSH login window.

2. Fully Patched at Release: Zero packages with a pending update at build time, verified. The complete CVE scan ships inside the image.

3. Comprehensive Evidence Pack: Every AMI includes an evidence pack located under /opt/optimization-report/:

   • Tuning_Parameters.txt: Every performance tuning parameter, each shown against the CentOS Stream default, with how to undo it.
   • Security_Parameters.txt: SELinux and every security setting, each shown against the CentOS Stream default, with how to undo it.
   • sbom.spdx.json: Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) in SPDX format generated from the RPM database.
   • cve_scan.txt / cve_scan_full.txt.gz: Vulnerability scan reports categorizing CVEs by upstream patch availability.
   • key_files.sha256: SHA-256 checksums of the key configuration files described in the reports, so the delivered state can be verified.
   • README.txt: Index file detailing artifact contents, administrative operational guidelines, and configuration defaults.

Maintenance:

1. Maintenance Specifications: Rebuilt and updated bi-weekly to monthly incorporating upstream CentOS Stream 10 security updates, updated artifact documentation per release, and administrative documentation.

About CentOS Stream 10 ARM64

1. CentOS Stream 10 Foundation: Provides a robust, enterprise-grade underlying OS with deep structural alignment to RHEL, ensuring high security and seamless ecosystem compatibility with AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, and traditional CentOS deployments.

2. Next-Generation RHEL Platform: CentOS Stream 10 tracks the leading edge of the RHEL 10 development branch, giving teams early access to the same packages that will ship in future RHEL 10 point releases. This provides a predictable upgrade path and broad compatibility with the Red Hat software ecosystem across development, staging, and production workloads.

3. Ideal Foundation for Modern Cloud Infrastructure: CentOS Stream 10's minimal ARM64 footprint means every compute resource goes directly to your workloads, with no legacy cruft and no package conflicts. It delivers a clean, predictable base for high-throughput web and proxy tiers (Nginx, HAProxy, Varnish Cache, Apache HTTPD), relational and in-memory data stores (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis), and modern runtimes that fully exploit ARM64 efficiency gains (Python, Node.js, Go, Docker, Kubernetes). Teams can build on top of enterprise-grade streaming and messaging infrastructure (Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ), roll out complete CI/CD and observability pipelines (Jenkins, SonarQube, Grafana), deploy Java application servers (Apache Tomcat), and integrate service discovery and secrets management tooling (Consul, HashiCorp Vault), all on a platform aligned with the RHEL 10 release track.