CentOS dedicated servers

If you searched for a "CentOS dedicated server", start with the news that changed everything: CentOS Linux is discontinued. CentOS Linux 8 went end-of-life on 31 December 2021 and CentOS Linux 7 on 30 June 2024 — neither receives security updates any more. What survives under the CentOS name is CentOS Stream, which is now a rolling release that sits upstream of Red Hat Enterprise Linux rather than a stable rebuild that trails it.

A CentOS dedicated server today therefore means one of three things on Serverside bare metal: CentOS Stream if you want to track where RHEL is heading, or — far more commonly — AlmaLinux or Rocky Linux, the two community rebuilds that are drop-in, bug-for-bug compatible with RHEL and are the direct successors to the old CentOS Linux experience. All three are in our OS catalog, all three are free of licence fees, and all three run on a single-tenant machine with full root and no hypervisor in the way.

Weighing Alma vs Rocky vs Stream? Read our Linux dedicated server guide.

CentOS Linux is dead — what that means for you

This is not a soft deprecation. CentOS Linux 8 stopped receiving updates on 31 December 2021, and CentOS Linux 7 — the version most legacy fleets are still on — reached end-of-life on 30 June 2024. After those dates, no security patches, no bug fixes, and no new packages ship from the CentOS Project. Every CVE disclosed against those releases since then is simply unpatched on a stock system.

The shift happened in December 2020, when Red Hat and the CentOS Project announced they were ending CentOS Linux as a downstream RHEL rebuild and redirecting effort to CentOS Stream. That single decision is why the community rebuilds — AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux — exist. If you are running CentOS 7 or 8 on a public-facing server, the honest advice is to migrate now, not at some future maintenance window.

• CentOS Linux 8 — end-of-life 31 December 2021 (no updates)
• CentOS Linux 7 — end-of-life 30 June 2024 (no updates)
• No CentOS Linux 9 or 10 was ever released — the line stopped at 8
• Third-party "extended lifecycle" vendors exist, but they are paid patches for a dead OS, not a long-term platform

CentOS Stream vs AlmaLinux vs Rocky Linux

The confusing part is that "CentOS" now points at something structurally different. CentOS Stream is a rolling release positioned upstream of RHEL: it contains the changes destined for the next minor release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You see fixes before they land in RHEL, not after — the exact inverse of how old CentOS Linux worked. Stream 9 is maintained until 31 May 2027 and Stream 10 (released December 2024) runs to roughly 2030, each ending when its corresponding RHEL major leaves Full Support.

AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux are the other half of the story. Both are community-built, downstream, bug-for-bug RHEL rebuilds — the drop-in replacements that preserve exactly what CentOS Linux used to be: a free, stable, RHEL-compatible base you standardise on and leave alone. As of 2026 both track RHEL 10.1. For most teams typing "CentOS dedicated server" out of muscle memory, one of these two is the right destination, not Stream.

• CentOS Stream — rolling, upstream of RHEL. Suits: tracking the next RHEL, dev/test against future RHEL, contributors. Not a fixed-point stable target.
• AlmaLinux — downstream 1:1 RHEL rebuild, foundation-backed, ELevate for major-version upgrades, broad panel support (cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin).
• Rocky Linux — downstream 1:1 RHEL rebuild, founded by a CentOS co-founder, migrate2rocky for same-major conversion.
• All three: SELinux, dnf/yum, RHEL-compatible package names — your existing playbooks and RPMs carry over.

Migrating off CentOS 7 or 8

The migration path depends on which major you are on and where you are going. For a same-major swap — CentOS 8 to Rocky 8 or Alma 8, or CentOS Stream to AlmaLinux — the community ships in-place conversion scripts that repoint your repositories and swap the release packages without a reinstall: migrate2rocky for Rocky, and almalinux-deploy for AlmaLinux (which can convert from CentOS Linux, CentOS Stream, Rocky, and Oracle Linux, and handles cPanel/Plesk/DirectAdmin boxes).

If you are stuck on CentOS 7, there is no same-major target — RHEL 7 rebuilds are themselves end-of-life. Here AlmaLinux ELevate does the heavy lifting: it performs major-version leap upgrades (EL7 to 8, 8 to 9, 9 to 10) that neither Rocky nor RHEL offer as a community tool. In practice, many teams treat a dedicated-server migration as the moment to do a clean reinstall instead — which on Serverside is a sub-minute re-image rather than an all-day project, so you rebuild onto a current AlmaLinux or Rocky and restore state from backup.

A migration is also exactly the moment you need to touch the machine below the OS. When you are booting an arbitrary AlmaLinux or Rocky installer, the network stack is not up yet and a broken conversion can leave you locked out — so plug-and-play ISO mounting lets you attach the installer of your choice, and KVM console access gives you a screen and keyboard on the box to drive it and watch it come up. For power users the same custom iPXE support that netboots your own images turns a clean rebuild into a scripted, repeatable step rather than a one-off recovery.

• CentOS 8 / Stream → AlmaLinux: almalinux-deploy (in-place, also converts Rocky/Oracle)
• CentOS 8 → Rocky 8: migrate2rocky (repoint repos, swap release RPMs in place)
• CentOS 7 → newer EL: AlmaLinux ELevate for leap upgrades, or a clean re-image
• On our hardware, a clean reinstall to current Alma/Rocky is a sub-minute re-provision — often simpler than an in-place conversion

Which should you actually run?

Cut through it with three questions. If you are still on CentOS 7 or 8 in production, the answer is not "which is best" — it is "migrate now", because you are running an OS with no security updates on a machine that faces the internet. Everything after that is a preference call.

• Want the classic CentOS Linux experience — stable, boring, RHEL-compatible, set-and-forget → AlmaLinux or Rocky Linux on Serverside.
• Need to track RHEL development, test against the next minor, or contribute upstream → CentOS Stream.
• Run cPanel/WHM or a hosting panel → AlmaLinux is the safest bet (panel support has consolidated around it).
• On CentOS 7/8 today → migrate immediately; pick Alma or Rocky as the destination and use the tooling above or a clean re-image.

The real risk of running EOL CentOS on a public server

It is worth being concrete rather than alarmist. A dead OS does not stop working the day it goes EOL — it stops receiving fixes. The risk compounds quietly: every kernel, OpenSSL, glibc, or sudo vulnerability disclosed after your EOL date stays open on your box indefinitely, and public-facing servers are exactly where those get found and exploited. On a bare-metal host with a full uplink, that is a large attack surface to leave unpatched.

There is also a compliance dimension that catches teams off guard. PCI-DSS, SOC 2, HIPAA, and most cyber-insurance policies require that systems run supported software receiving security patches. A CentOS 7 or 8 host will fail that control outright — an auditor does not care that the machine still boots. Migrating to a maintained AlmaLinux, Rocky, or Stream release closes both the technical and the paperwork gap. Our always-on DDoS mitigation reduces one class of exposure, but it is not a substitute for a patched OS.