[CentOS] Admins supporting both RHEL and CentOS

[James Hogarth]

On 28 November 2017 at 13:48, Mark Haney <mark.haney at neonova.net> wrote:
> On 11/28/2017 08:06 AM, Joseph L. Casale wrote:
>>
>> With a few exceptions, I see most admins treat CentOS as a single
>> rolling release and rely on the ABI commitment assuming things
>> just work between point releases. On the other hand I see the
>> opposite with RHEL where admins constrain installations to the
>> point release.
>>
>> What is the case with users on this list who support both?
>
>
> I can't really speak for anyone else, but for me, a lot depends on the use
> of the systems.  I typically treat RHEL and CentOS the same way as far as
> updating to the latest point release.  It's never bit me in the past that I
> am aware of.
>
> The only exception to that is with the SGI Altix 4300/4400s I used to
> manage.  We migrated from SLES to RHEL and in those cases, barring a serious
> enough bug, those boxes were left alone until time came to refresh them,
> such as the move from RHEL5 to RHEL6.
>
>


Note that RHEL is a special case as there's some situations companies
will pay out for the Extended Update Support (EUS)[0] in order to stay
on a particular milestone for longer.

In addition there is the slight bonus of access to beta of the next
milestone or major release which may affect your workflow if you have
a suitable test environment, and of course you'll get the milestone
quicker on release so that needs to be paid attention to for testing.

Outside of this area the two can be, and should be, treated
identically in terms of update policies.



[0] https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata