Hot on the heels of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 release the Centos team have put out Centos 7 and now we are happy to offer a Centos 7 VM image on our control panel. You can select it on new installs and also on re-installs.
This has been a long awaited update due to a few new features, and changes which we have wanted/needed.
Here are a few of the changes in the new distro and what they will mean to you.
Systemd
Systemd is now replacing init scripts. This has been highly debated change, and a lot of people have not liked change. After watching the following talk at Linux.conf.au , we are of the opinion that this is going to be the next great thing ( The Six Stages of systemd [linux.conf.au 2014] )
MariaDB
MySQL has been switched with MariaDB. For those unsure what MariaDB is, its a community-developed fork of the MySQL. This happened when Oracle bought out the MySQL, and people wanted to keep it open source. For this reason, it acts, and works exactly like MySQL, and is a drop in replacement.
Docker
It’s a virtualized hosting environment for software “containers”. A container is an abstraction for configuring and deploying portable, self-sufficient applications that run virtually anywhere. Docker applications are OS and technology agnostic, and they’re lighter-weight than VMs while still providing isolation and sandboxing features important to DevOps.
64 bit
64 bit is the only option. The Linux base has largely moved to systems with 64-bit processing and memory addressing, and so only 64-bit kernels and ISOs will be provided with RHEL 7. Since Centos 7 is a derivative of this, Centos 7 also is only 64 bit.
This should not be an issue, as 32bit libraries allow you to run 32bit applications if required.
Upgrading Centos 6 to Centos 7
Centos should shortly permit an ‘in-place’ upgrade. Which (theoretically) means distro upgrades are possible between Centos versions (like it always has been with Debian and Ubuntu distros).
For those wishing to upgrade from Centos 6 to Centos 7 (without a reinstall): hold tight for now. We hope to bring you an upgrade guide shortly.