Hardened Centos7 Extended Support

We started using CentOS  for our operations as soon as it became available. Initially, we used CentOS  for its long-term support. It served as a stable production environment. However, they changed from a long-term support cycle and started dropping new versions every two or three years, making it less ideal for stable production environments. We experienced some incidents after updates, which led us to switch to long-term support on AlmaLinux .

CentOS was a stable and predictable environment, providing a consistent update cycle once a month. Their updates initially followed the schedule of Fedora and RHEL  distributions, focusing on delivering a stable testing environment. However, the update cycle changed when CentOS was prioritized for updates, causing stability issues. We began to experience incidents with updates that disrupted features. Consequently, our organization transitioned to AlmaLinux  for its long-term support.

CentOS removed long-term support, and version releases every two to three years are not ideal for production environments because they necessitate frequent updates.

I have been using this solution for probably more than ten to twelve years.

We did not experience any problems integrating CentOS within our existing infrastructure because it remains a RHEL-based distribution.

I believe CentOS is stable, but we are gradually moving away from it. Currently, we have five to ten servers on CentOS out of our 60 to 70-service environment.

I think CentOS remains a stable solution, but it is not our primary platform due to the reduced long-term support.

We never used customer support as we did not pay for those services. However, I would rate the documentation about eight in terms of usefulness.

Positive

Setting up CentOS is straightforward, and you simply boot from a CD to get started.

CentOS is a free product with free updates. There are third-party companies available for support, but they charge varying amounts for their services.

We evaluated RHEL . It offers various enhancements, like the Ansible  Tower , which includes a GUI and scheduling features. However, RHEL's pricing is high, making it less attractive.

Overall, I would not recommend CentOS for production environments because it requires frequent updates every two to three years due to its lack of long-term support. However, for learning Linux or experimental use, CentOS is a suitable and cost-effective platform with ample documentation. I would probably rate it about seven to eight.

On-premises

We primarily use the solution for testing software and applications in the IT industry. I also study the storage system of AI on CentOS .

CentOS adapts well to many software and applications, providing good compatibility. Additionally, there are many online communities to learn from, which is beneficial.

CentOS can be somewhat difficult for beginners, as it has a complex UI, especially for those not in the IT field. Adding more support could be beneficial, though Red Hat with IBM support is an alternative that may be costly. Also, modernizing CentOS could be a suggestion.

CentOS is a stable operating system, and I would rate its stability as nine out of ten.

I do not have personal experience with customer service for CentOS.

Positive

The initial setup was very easy. I would rate the ease of setup at 8.5 out of ten.

I am not responsible for the setup cost in my company, so I am unsure about the cost of the license.

I recommend CentOS for its stability and its ability to adapt to many software and applications. It is also very accessible.

Our clients are pharmaceutical companies, and they're hesitant to change anything that's working. They want us to continue with what's proven. So we stayed on CentOS 7 for a long time. If we changed, we'd have to provide extensive validation that the new operating system is perfect and has no vulnerabilities.

However, CentOS 7 reached its end of life a few months ago, forcing us to migrate to CentOS 9. This was a big effort because we have a lot of in-house servers. For the production servers on AWS, we didn't face any issues migrating from CentOS 7.

The in-depth documentation available for CentOS is great. If I need to install a feature or fix a server issue, I can easily find answers online. The CentOS community is also vast and helpful. Overall, I think it's a very good Linux distribution.

We work on the terminal. If you work on the server, the command-line interface makes perfect sense because we need to do automation, and that requires entering commands. The command-line utility works perfectly. I have no issues with it.

For security, we have an AWS load balancer in front of our servers. We don't give public access to our CentOS servers directly. That's why I haven't focused much on CentOS's security features, as AWS is ultimately responsible for the security.

One issue I recently faced, but I think it was due to my IT support guys, was that when the server storage gets full, the service crashes. It's very difficult to regain access and stability in that situation. That could be improved.

So, the stability might be improved. But I don't think it's a CentOS-level issue. The system administrators need to come up with a solution for that, but I don't think it's CentOS's fault. I haven't done any research [R&D] on this issue.

There's one thing for sure. We recently migrated from CentOS 7 to CentOS 9, and it was a bit difficult. For example, updating Windows is simple; you just download it, and it takes about 15-20 minutes. But that's not the case with migrating from CentOS 7 to 9. 

We had to back up the entire server, launch a new server, and then restore the backup to the new server. We couldn't directly migrate. I think that was a bit of a problem. The setup and updates are not that new in CentOS.

Everyone in my company has used CentOS from the very beginning. So, we've been using it for the past five to six years. We used CentOS 7 for four or five years. 

It's very stable. We've hosted other solutions for about three to five years, and I've never seen an issue at the OS level. But upgrades are a different story.

It is a pretty scalable product. Currently, our production schools are hosted on CentOS. So, that is about ten lakhs (one million) users could be using it. I'm not entirely sure about the exact number, but since the application is hosted on the CentOS operating system, that's the approximate user base.

A ton of articles are available on the internet about CentOS, so I haven't really felt the need for active support. But overall, you can say that the internet is still a great source of information on how to work with CentOS.

The setup is pretty straightforward. We've installed other facilities that are just as good. There's nothing particularly different in the process.

The integration is as good as any other Linux platform. If another Linux platform can integrate with something, then CentOS can also integrate with it.

I think we don't pay for it. It's a Linux distribution, so it's open source. But I'm not sure if they might be charging for support or not because I haven't contacted their support.

For CentOS, I would rate it as nine out of ten.

CentOS is pretty old now, so I wouldn't recommend anyone use it. Everyone should follow the Docker container model at the moment. They should build their Alpine images of Dockers and host them. 

If they want to host them in the cloud, then AWS ECS (Elastic Container Service) works fine. If they want to host their services on-premises, they can use Kubernetes to host them.

We use the solution for file servers and emails. It is an operating system. Our email server, file server, and web server are running on CentOS.

The product is stable. We have to update it every once in a while. The vendor updates the tool regularly to solve vulnerabilities. We have to do patches. The software and hardware compatibility are updated. The vendor updates the versions to keep up with the new hardware.

The solution must improve its security. It must provide security against hackers. The security features must always be updated.

I have been using the solution for more than 15 years.

The tool is stable. I rate the stability a ten out of ten. It doesn’t shut down or crash.

The tool is not for large systems. We have about 20 users in our organization. We are not planning to change the solution for now.

We get plenty of support from the web. Since the product is open-sourced, a lot of community support is available. We can find answers to our queries.

The initial setup is easy. I rate the ease of setup an eight or nine out of ten. The time taken for deployment depends on what we have to add to the tool. Generally, the deployment can be done in about an hour.

The product is free. It’s open-sourced. It is the biggest advantage of the product.

Many software applications are open source. We do not have to spend money on them. Many people are using CentOS. It is a popular OS for those who don’t want to spend lots of money on Windows. People who are knowledgeable in setting up servers use the product. Those who do not know the technical setup choose Windows. CentOS users are programmers with technical knowledge.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

On-premises

We used the solution as an operating system. We were using CentOS because it supported the Red Hat flavor. Now that CentOS has stopped providing the support, we have switched to Alma OS.

We used the solution as an operating system. The solution is simple to use.

Currently, CentOS is not providing support, so you will not get new packages that are compatible with that operating system.

The solution provides good stability.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

Around 70% of our organization is using CentOS.

We previously used Ubuntu. We switched to CentOS because it was a business requirement, and our clients demanded it.

CentOS is an open source that is free of cost.

I would recommend CentOS to other users because it supports the Red Hat flavor. It is easy to integrate the solution with other tools and systems.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.