Title

AWS re:Invent 2023 - The shortest path to Red Hat Enterprise Linux on AWS (ENT105-S)

Summary

The speaker is a technical marketer for RHEL and host of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Presents podcast.
The talk focuses on migrating from third-party Linux distributions, specifically CentOS Linux, to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) on AWS.
CentOS Linux 7 is going end of life on June 30th, 2024, which is referred to as "Techmageddon 2024."
The speaker emphasizes the importance of enterprise support, security certifications, and a stable ecosystem, which are lacking in community projects like CentOS.
Red Hat engineers work across Fedora, CentOS Stream, and RHEL to ensure a robust and secure Linux distribution.
RHEL offers a predictable lifecycle with 10 years of support, including 5 years of full support and 5 years of maintenance support, with new minor versions released every six months.
The speaker highlights the benefits of RHEL, such as support, consulting services, in-place upgrades, supported conversions, and live kernel patching.
An in-place conversion tool, Convert to RHEL, allows users to migrate from CentOS Linux 7 to RHEL without duplicating hardware or infrastructure on AWS.
A live demo (converted to a video for the presentation) showcases the conversion process on the AWS EC2 console.
The speaker mentions a special offer in the AWS marketplace for RHEL for third-party Linux migration, which includes in-place conversions and additional benefits.

The end of life for CentOS Linux 7 is a significant event for organizations using it, as it will no longer receive updates or support, which could lead to security and compliance issues.
The speaker's emphasis on enterprise support and security certifications highlights the importance of these factors for businesses, especially those in regulated industries like healthcare and finance.
The predictable lifecycle of RHEL can help organizations plan their IT strategies and maintenance schedules more effectively.
The Convert to RHEL utility is a strategic tool for Red Hat, as it simplifies the migration process for existing CentOS users and encourages them to adopt RHEL.
The special offer in the AWS marketplace suggests a collaboration between AWS and Red Hat to facilitate the migration process and indicates a push towards increasing RHEL adoption on the AWS cloud.
The speaker's personal preference for Fedora Linux on the desktop and the mention of CentOS Stream's role in the development of enterprise Linux distributions provide insight into the broader ecosystem of Linux distributions and their targeted use cases.