MINNEAPOLIS May 24, 2021 — Nor-Tech, the leading experts on Linux-based high-performance technology solutions, just announced plans to safely and smoothly transition new and existing HPC clients from CentOS 7 to a strong alternative such as Rocky Linux.
Nor-Tech Executive Vice President Jeff Olson said, “We want everyone to be aware that we have been closely monitoring the situation for months and are engaged in making appropriate decisions in the best interest of our customers.”
Although CentOS 7 updates and security patches won’t end until June 30, 2024, Red Hat announced that CentOS 8 will be EOL at the end of this year. Despite this, Nor-Tech officials say that CentOS 7 remains a good choice for new servers until another open source product, such as Rocky Linux, is fully available. The announcement from Rocky Linux is expected sometime in the fall of 2021— well in advance of the CentOS 7 support end.
Nor-Tech, which is monitoring both rockylinux.org/ and following direction from the OpenHPC steering committee, will continue to base its strategy on advice from recognized authorities and its own world class team of open source engineers.
Rocky Linux is a community enterprise operating system, currently under development, with the focused intention of keeping Rocky Linux in the hands of the open source community. Carefully devising this strategy ensures that Rocky Linux will never meet the same fate as CentOS. The infrastructure is being built from the ground up by collaborators and sponsoring organizations around composability and security compliance. It will provide the substrate for, not only the base operating system, but also an entire community of diverse applications.
Nor-Tech is currently evaluating and/or benchmarking Rocky Linux along with other alternatives.
“While some customers anticipating new cluster builds are concerned, we can assure them that we are on top of the situation—taking steps to ensure a smooth transition,” Olson added. “We have one of the most trusted engineering teams in the world who have proven they are capable of handling far more nuanced and complex situations than this.”
Nor-Tech is on CRN’s list of the top 40 Data Center Infrastructure Providers along with IBM, Oracle, Dell, and Supermicro and is also a member of Hyperion Research’s prestigious HPC Technical Computing Advisory Panel. The company is a complete high performance computer solution provider for 2015 and 2017 Nobel Physics Award-contending/winning projects. Nor-Tech engineers average 20+ years of experience. This strong industry reputation and deep partner relationships also enable the company to be a leading supplier of cost-effective Lenovo desktops, laptops, tablets and Chromebooks to schools and enterprises. All of Nor-Tech’s high performance technology is developed by Nor-Tech in Minnesota and supported by Nor-Tech around the world. The company is headquartered in Burnsville, Minn. just outside of Minneapolis. Nor-Tech holds the following contracts: Minnesota State IT, GSA, University of Wisconsin System, and NASA SEWP V. To contact Nor-Tech call 952-808-1000/toll free: 877-808-1010 or visit https://www.nor-tech.com. Full release at: https://www.nor-tech.com/category/news/. For media inquiries, contact Jeanna Van Rensselar at Smart PR Communications; jeanna@smartprcommunications.com 630-363-8081.
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