CentOS 7 Support is Discontinued for New Erlang Releases

[michaelklishin]

From the 1st of May 2022, RabbitMQ will discontinue support for CentOS 7.
Going forward, RabbitMQ will support Fedora, Rocky Linux, CentOS Stream 8,
and Centos Stream 9 when it goes GA.

The Reasons Why CentOS 7 is Being Discontinued

• CentOS 7 still runs version 1.0 of OpenSSL. RabbitMQ requires 23.x and 24.x Erlang/OTP versions which in turn
  require OpenSSL 1.1 at a minimum for modern cryptography support in Erlang. With CentOS 7 still running on
  OpenSSL 1.0, this is one of the reasons RabbitMQ needs to discontinue its use.
• CentOS 7 still runs version 3.x of the Linux kernel (a later version of the Linux kernel is needed).
• There are many advances in OpenSSL version 1.1 compared to OpenSSL version 1.0 (which CentOS 7 still runs on).
  As a result, many projects including Erlang/OTP now require OpenSSL version 1.1.

What is Changing?

• The upcoming RabbitMQ 3.10 release will not include packages for CentOS 7.
• Any new patch releases of RabbitMQ 3.9 starting with 3.9.17 and of RabbitMQ 3.8 starting with 3.8.31 will not include packages for CentOS 7.
  Learn more about RabbitMQ release series in RabbitMQ documentation.
• Erlang RPM packages of Erlang 24.3 produced by our team
  now provide packages compatible with Fedora, Rocky Linux, CentOS Stream 8,
  and Centos Stream 9.

What is not Changing?

• Previously published RabbitMQ releases that currently include RPM packages for CentOS 7 can still be used.
• Erlang RPM packages of Erlang 23.3 releases can still be used.

The Actions You Must Complete

To use RabbitMQ 3.10 version onwards with a Red Hat family operating system, you must migrate your RabbitMQ deployments
to one of: Fedora, Rocky Linux, Red Hat Linux 8.5, CentOS Stream 8, or CentOS Stream 9. The ELevate project
is an emerging tool that makes it easier to migrate from CentOS 7 to a more modern Red Hat Linux family distribution.

Operating system migrations can be completed in several ways:

• In-place Upgrades
• Creation of a new cluster and schema transfer from the original one
• Blue-Green Deployment Upgrades

Note: If you want to or it is a requirement that you need to upgrade the OS, the kernel, Erlang/OTP, and RabbitMQ at the same time,
then it is highly recommended that you upgrade by either creating a new cluster and transferring the schema
to it or by completing the Blue/Green deployment upgrade process.