Alibaba Cloud Linux 2 will be discontinued (end of life) at 00:00:00 (UTC+8) on March 31, 2024. CentOS 7 will be discontinued (end of life) at 00:00:00 (UTC+8) on June 30, 2024. To quickly obtain technical support and ensure business continuity and stability, we commend that you use Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 or ContainerOS.
Dates
Alibaba Cloud Linux 2 will be discontinued (end of life) at 00:00:00 (UTC+8) on March 31, 2024.
CentOS 7 will be discontinued (end of life) at 00:00:00 (UTC+8) on June 30, 2024.
Impacts
If your Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) cluster uses Alibaba Cloud Linux 2 or CentOS 7 as the operating systems of node pools, the operating systems of the node pools are no longer updated. This means that no feature enhancement or CVE vulnerability patching will be provided in the future.
To ensure business continuity and stability, you can continue to create or expand node pools that run Alibaba Cloud Linux 2 or CentOS 7 unless otherwise notified. We recommend that you change the operating systems of your node pools at the earliest opportunity.
ACK clusters other than ACK Serverless clusters are affected.
Solution
Newly created clusters or node pools
When you create a cluster or node pool, set Operating System to Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 or ContainerOS.
Existing clusters or node pools
If your cluster or node pool uses Alibaba Cloud Linux 2 or CentOS 7, we recommend that you update the operating system. An operating system update replaces the system disks of nodes in batches. Do not store important data in the system disks of the nodes or back up the data before the update. The data disks of the nodes are not affected.
References
The CentOS project announced the end of life for CentOS Linux. CentOS Linux public images provided by Alibaba Cloud are derived from the repositories provided by the CentOS project. When CentOS Linux reaches its EOL, Alibaba Cloud stops providing support for CentOS Linux. For more information, see How do I handle the impacts of the EOL of CentOS Linux?
Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 is optimized based on Alibaba Cloud Linux 2. For example, Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 provides updated basic software and application software and is deeply optimized for the 8th generation computing instances, such as Yitian, Sapphire Rapids, and Genoa. For more information, see Use Alibaba Cloud Linux 3.
ContainerOS is an operating system that Alibaba Cloud provides for containerized development. ContainerOS is fully compatible with Kubernetes. The security of ContainerOS is enhanced based on Alibaba Cloud Linux 3. In addition, ContainerOS launches much faster, provides simplified system services and software packages, and integrates out-of-the-box cloud-native components. For more information, see ContainerOS overview.