Glencoe Software will stop providing support for upgrades to OMERO Plus installations on CentOS 7 and RHEL 7 on June 30, 2024 and is no longer supporting upgrades to installations on Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04.

Why are we doing this?

It is essential that Glencoe Software deploys and maintains its software in secure and supported environments.

Some distributions including Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and 18.04 LTS have already reached their end of life in terms of maintenance & security support.

In December 2020, the CentOS community and Red Hat announced the sunset of CentOS. CentOS 7 will officially reach its end of life in June 2024. RHEL 7 maintenance support will terminate at the same time, although Extended Life Cycle support will be available until June 2026.

Distributions like CentOS 7 and RHEL 7 also ship a series of outdated software through their system packages, the most impactful ones for the OMERO ecosystem being Python 3.6 and OpenSSL 1.0.2. A more recent version of Python 3.8 is supported until October 2024

Distributions and their end of Glencoe Software Upgrade Support

The table below summarizes the major Linux distributions under which OMERO Plus is typically installed as well as the vendor-specified end of life for each. Glencoe Software has specified a date after which our support for upgrading or installing OMERO Plus in these environments will end. OMERO Plus installations, migrations and upgrades are no longer covered by the annual SMA following the Glencoe End of Support date. Glencoe Software does not recommend installing OMERO Plus on an OS within 12 months of the vendor end of life.

What happens now?

We are working with the OME team to test and release a series of changes across the OMERO components to work around several of the known CentOS 7 issues and maintain compatibility for the upcoming 12 months. Once support has ended, these changes will be removed and all libraries will start requiring newer OS versions.

Can I still install OMERO Plus on CentOS 7/RHEL7?

We will no longer install new OMERO Plus deployments on CentOS 7/RHEL 7. We will be maintaining support for upgrades to existing OMERO Plus installations on CentOS7/RHEL 7 until our end of support date, but we will not support upgrades or enhancements after June 1, 2024.

How should I upgrade?

Glencoe Software supports the installation of OMERO Plus over a range of supported platforms. The table above lists all recommended Linux distributions alongside their support timeline.

CentOS 7/RHEL 7 end of life will impact other resources in your institution. First and foremost, you should reach out to your IT department or provider and clarify their policies and supported operating systems.

Upgrades to the OS in-place are not recommended by Glencoe Software. We instead recommend treating it as a migration to new machine(s). This would involve the migration of the database, raw data, and application configuration.

Customers planning an upgrade should contact Glencoe Software support as soon as possible.

I have more questions

Please do not hesitate to contact us at support@glencoesoftware.com.