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Monthly Linux Tip: Update Regarding CentOS 8 Support for ArcGIS Enterprise 10.9

By Markus Walker

As you may already be aware, it was announced in December 2020 that CentOS 8 will reach End of Lifetime (EOL) status December 31st, 2021. Many concerns have been raised as a result in the open source and well as the ArcGIS communities. We understand that for our ArcGIS Enterprise on Linux audience, this may directly impact you.

As of now, we are planning on continuing support for CentOS 8.x for the release of ArcGIS Enterprise 10.9. While there have been CentOS alternatives, as well as additional Red Hat offerings, the road ahead is still unclear. The ArcGIS Enterprise on Linux team is closely monitoring these trends and are acting accordingly. In the meantime, the ArcGIS Enterprise team will continue supporting CentOS 8.x in this upcoming release.

In the comment section, please share how your organization has adjusted or plans to adjust to the early deprecation of CentOS 8. Thank you for reading this Monthly Linux Tip!

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Markus Schenardi(@markusschenardi)
March 4, 2020 2:38 am

These approach might be working for the recovery scenario.

But what is the official way to duplicate an environment side by side? A common scenario is to “downgrade” a production system to a testsystem to later approve the update procedure or to simulate other updates e.g. of third party tools.

What’s your recommendation?

Jon Quinn(@jquinn)
March 5, 2020 10:59 am

This would be an approach you can take to set up a duplicate environment. By creating the environment where etc\hosts entries are in place, you’re isolating the traffic to the standby environment to machines that have the entries. Read-only mode discussed in the blog is a way that you don’t need to downgrade the production environment. Set up your new environment, put the production environment to read-only so no updates can be performed, then you can test your patches/updates/upgrades on the new environment without impacting production or dealing with data differences.

Thomas Mathew(@t-mathew)
March 5, 2020 3:53 am

It looks like this method is not possible when migrating to a machine in Microsoft Azure using ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Builder 10.8. This is because AE Cloud Builder does not provide an option to update the etc\hosts file between creating the machine and installing the software. The AE Cloud Builder does the creation of the Azure server machine and installing of ArcGIS Enterprise, in one step, without a configuration to edit the etc\hosts file.

Let me know if there’s a step I could be missing.

Jon Quinn(@jquinn)
March 5, 2020 11:02 am
Reply to  Thomas Mathew

Right, standing up a duplicate environment is challenging when you don’t have the ability to modify the etc\hosts files in between when the machines are provisioned and the software installed and configured. In this case, you’ll need to either update the public DNS entry to resolve to the standby while it’s getting configured, or investigate whether the standby can be in a separate subnet that resolves the public DNS differently, (doesn’t resolve to the production environment), so the standby can be created. We’re updating the blog to indicate other ways to achieve hostname resolution outside of the etc\hosts file.

Lisa King(@e039755-2)
September 19, 2022 6:14 am

Can this approach be used if I am moving my enterprise to a newer windows server operating system? Also, can I use this approach if I want to use and newer version of enterprise?

Nicholas Willette(@eulessonline)
January 18, 2023 7:02 am
Reply to  Lisa King

Did Lisa’s question get an answer? I’m moving to a new OS and want to upgrade the Enterprise Server software version as well. Or do I need to upgrade Enterprise Server on the existing machine BEFORE I try movingto the new machine?

Thiago dos Santos Nascimento(@thiago-nascimento)
October 1, 2024 10:33 am

I had the same question, and according to support, the following strategy is recommended:

  1. Install the new version of the OS on a new machine(s);
  2. Install the same version of the ArcGIS Enterprise on your new machine(s), with the OS already upgraded;
  3. Use webgisdr tool to migrate the content from the old ArcGIS Enterprise to the one in your new machine(s);
  4. Upgrade the ArcGIS Enterprise on the new machine(s).
Lisa King(@e039755-2)
June 25, 2024 1:45 pm
Reply to  Lisa King

I still seek this information.

Mike Schonlau(@mschonlau2-2)
August 17, 2023 10:08 am

I’m trying to restore a webgisdr backup (11.1) to a new CloudBuilder deployment (11.1), then switch my DNS/AWS load balancer, etc to point to the new environment. Having trouble with the hosts file entry. I’m not exactly sure what to use there. Do you have any more specific examples you could give?