Convert from CentOS Linux® or Oracle Linux to Red Hat® Enterprise Linux with the Convert2RHEL command line utility.
What is Convert2RHEL?
Convert2RHEL is a command line utility that converts RPM-based Linux operating systems (OS) to a fully supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux OS. It’s an automated way to standardize on Red Hat Enterprise Linux—instead of manually redeploying all your workloads.
Convert2RHEL minimizes the need for costly redeployment projects and reduces administrative burden by maintaining existing OS customizations, configurations, and preferences during the conversion.
Why Convert2RHEL?
The CentOS Project will discontinue updates and releases of CentOS Linux® between 2021 and 2024. This means current CentOS Linux users will need to choose a migration path:
- CentOS Linux 8: December 31, 2021
- CentOS Linux 7: June 30, 2024
How to use Convert2RHEL
Identify a conversion path
Conversion paths include:
- CentOS Linux 7 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
- CentOS Linux 8 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
- Oracle Linux 7 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
- Oracle Linux 8 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
Conversions from CentOS Linux 6 and Oracle Linux 6 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux are unsupported—since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 is outside the lifecycle maintenance phase—but guidance is provided in this documentation.
Prepare to convert
Read this documentation for guidance, additional features, and information on known limitations. Verify that your system is supported for conversion to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and then back it up. Use the documentation—which includes step-by-step instructions on how to assess system applications and data—to identify potential complications with workloads, configurations, or applications, and proactively remediate issues. Identify compatibility issues and layered applications prior to your migration in order to minimize risk and optimize the system.
If challenges or complexities arise during this phase, reach out to Red Hat Consulting. These experts can help convert more complex applications and workloads, as well as help standardize processes, analyze workloads, and automate migration variants—all of which can help minimize risks associated with OS conversion.
Convert
After backing up your existing OS, run the Convert2RHEL utility while following along with the documentation. Convert2RHEL will automatically identify and replace OS packages from your original Linux distribution with Red Hat Enterprise Linux equivalents, but Convert2RHEL is officially supported to help troubleshoot conversion variants.
Once the conversion is successful, reboot the system into Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It may be necessary to reinstall third-party RPMs or reconfigure system services after conversion.
Upgrade
Prepare for an in-place upgrade after Convert2RHEL is finished. Upgrade from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, and then from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 before Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 reaches end of maintenance on June 30, 2024. These upgrade tools help reduce the administrative burden of upgrading and simplifies OS version control.
Get back to work
Once the conversion and upgrade are complete, you have access to all the latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux updates—as well as all the performance, support, management, and security capabilities that Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes.
For more detailed notes about the conversion process, visit the technical documentation and Red Hat Knowledgebase.
