Solutions to Image End of Life (EOL)

Image EOL (End of Life) refers to the termination of an image’s lifecycle (due to reasons such as third-party support expiration or open-source project plans). UCloud Global will simultaneously discontinue technical support for UHosts using the corresponding image and mark “EOL” in the image version selection interface to indicate that the image has reached its end of lifecycle.
For solutions after an image reaches EOL, please refer to this document. If your business is not covered by the relevant images, please contact us for a tailored solution.

I. Solutions for CentOS Linux After the End of Maintenance

According to the official announcement from CentOS, it will discontinue maintenance for the CentOS Linux project. Since the CentOS Linux base images provided by UCloud are derived from CentOS official sources, UCloud will also cease maintenance for these base images after the official maintenance stops.
This document primarily introduces the content and impact of the CentOS official announcement, as well as UCloud’s base image response plans and recommendations.

CentOS Official Announcement Content

On December 8, 2020, CentOS officially announced its plan to discontinue maintenance for CentOS Linux and introduced the CentOS Stream project. For detailed information, please read the CentOS Official Announcement . The impacts on the CentOS Linux image are as follows:

• CentOS Linux 7, as a reproduction of RHEL 7, stopped updates on August 6, 2020, but will follow the current support plan until maintenance ends (EOL) on June 30, 2024.
• CentOS Linux 8, as a reproduction of RHEL 8, had its lifecycle shortened and stopped updates and maintenance (EOL) on December 31, 2021.

Under these official change plans, users of CentOS Linux 7 and 8 will no longer receive any software maintenance or support, including issue fixes and feature updates. CentOS officially recommends migrating environments to CentOS Stream versions after maintenance ends; for production environments or systems deploying critical services, stable Red Hat Enterprise Linux is recommended. Users need to assess the following:

• CentOS Stream is a rolling-release version and only serves as a pre-testing version for RHEL, which may pose certain risks when used in production environments.

UCloud Global Basic Image Response Plan

In response to the official announcement from CentOS, UCloud Global has implemented the following plans:

• UCloud Global’s service support for the CentOS operating system will align with the official CentOS timeline. Support for CentOS Linux 7 will continue until June 30, 2024.
• CentOS Linux 8 ended maintenance on December 31, 2021, and UCloud has stopped updating and maintaining this base image. However, the CentOS Linux 8 image will not be removed for now, so users of cloud hosts currently using related images will not be affected.

Response Suggestions

You can select a suitable operating system to replace CentOS Linux as you need. The specific operational instructions are as follows:

• If you do not need to keep the system disk data, you can change it by reinstalling the operating system. For detailed operations. Please refer to Operation Guide;
• If you need to keep the system disk data, it is recommended to use UCloud Server Migration Center (USMC) for migration. Please see the product description for details.
• UCloud Global recommends using the Rocky Linux image.

Additionally, there are other basic images available in the UCloud Global catalog. You can select an operating system as needed. The detailed descriptions of available images are as follows: