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December 2024: CMS Gold Image Updates

December 2024: CMS Gold Image Updates








CMS Cloud


December 2024: CMS Gold Image Updates

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Overview 

Below you will find this month's updates for Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Gold Images (GIs) from the CMS Hybrid Cloud Team.

Upcoming Updates

* *Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (RHEL9) CMS GI is available on December 13, 2024:*
* The new RHEL9 CMS GI better aligns to Acceptable Risk Safeguard 5 (ARS 5 [ https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/cms-information-technology/informationsecurity/information/acceptable-risk-safeguards-50x ]).
* Note there are major differences between RHEL9 and older versions that are detail on the RHEL9 Usage CCG page [ https://cloud.cms.gov/rhel9-usage-guide ].
* Please read the RHEL9 Usage CCG [ https://cloud.cms.gov/rhel9-usage-guide ] page for details on how to test/dev the new RHEL9 in your lower environments before deploying live into production. 

* *Amazon Linux 2023 with Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) Optimization CMS GI is available on December 13, 2024: *
* Existing launch template configurations based on the EKS-optimized AL2 GI will not work for AL2023 as the node initialization process has changed.
* Amazon has published documentation  [ https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eks/latest/userguide/al2023.html ]highlighting the changes. Additional information will be posted soon on CCG as it becomes available.

* *Amazon Linux 2 (AL2) Operating Systems (OS) End of Life (EOL) in June 2025:*
* AL2 has an upcoming operating system EOL by Amazon in June 2025 with the last CMS AL2 GI to be released in April 2025.
* CMS Hybrid Cloud Managed Patching will continue to support AL2 until OS EOL in June 2025.
* All AL2 users should plan on migrating to the CMS AL2023 GI by April 2025.
* Please note any CMS Customers still on AL2 will receive a Hybrid Cloud Jira ticket to migrate to AL2023 as soon as possible.

* *Amazon Linux 2023 (AL2023) CMS GI is available as of July 2024:*
* In anticipation of the AL2 EOL in June 2025, the CMS Hybrid Cloud Team released the AL2023 CMS GI on July 12, 2024.
* Be aware that as an added security measure, the /tmp directory has been mounted with the NOEXEC option which will not allow the execution of binaries within /tmp. 
* This change may impact 3rd-party tools which execute scripts out of the /tmp directory, like Packer. Packer does have the option to specify a different directory to execute scripts from (see the documentation [ https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/docs/provisioners/shell#remote_folder ] for more details).


* *CMS Marketplace Customers to utilize "Bring Your Own License" (BYOL) Red Hat GIs only:*
* For our CMS Marketplace customers, please note that Marketplace Information Technology Group (MITG) has their own dedicated license for Red Hat which includes premium support.
* Thus, if a Marketplace customer utilizes a regular Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) GI and not a BYOL RHEL, they will incur an unnecessary cost. 

* Note that all BYOL GIs have "byol" in the GI name.

* *Windows 2016 (WIN2016) OS End of Life (EOL) in January 2027:*
* In anticipation of the Windows2016 operating system EOL by Microsoft, the last CMS WIN2016 GI will be released in 2026.
* Additional information will be available in 2025.

Gold Image Accessibility

CMS GI availability is based on the respective team's CAMP details. If a team would like to request a new CMS GI, please open a Hybrid Cloud Support Jira Ticket [ https://jiraent.cms.gov/plugins/servlet/desk/portal/22 ] and notify the designated Hosting Coordinator.

Below is a table of the currently available CMS GIs by operating system (OS) and the respective EOLs.

*CMS Gold Image* **Last CMS GI Available** **OS Vendor-provided End of Life (EOL)** Amazon Linux 2  April 2025 June 2025 Amazon Linux 2 with EKS April 2025 June 2025 Windows 2016 September 2026 January 2027 Amazon Linux 2023 TBD March 2028 RHEL8 TBD May 2029 Windows 2019 TBD January 2029 Windows 2022 TBD October 2031

Future release dates for 2024 CMS GIs are available in our CMS Cloud Gold Image and patching calendar [ https://cloud.cms.gov/cms-cloud-patching-gold-image-calendar-new ].

For more information about CMS GIs, please review the available Gold Image documentation [ https://cloud.cms.gov/intro-gold-image ]. 

Questions or Concerns

For questions or issues, please file a Hybrid Cloud support ticket.  [ https://jiraent.cms.gov/plugins/servlet/desk/portal/22 ]



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