Starting in October 2024, Centreon is updating the Release Cadence and Version Lifecycle of its Self-Hosted Centreon IT Monitoring software platform.
All Centreon users should read this blog post to understand how this may impact their processes and policies about updating their Centreon platform software version. This includes users of the Open Source edition as well as Commercial editions.
Note: users of the SaaS version of Centreon, called Centreon Cloud, are not impacted by the changes described here. The Centreon Cloud environment adopts a continuous delivery policy and its software version is always up to date.
(Alternatively, scroll to the bottom of this article to watch a video explaining all the changes)
Release Cadence: one major version per year
Starting with Centreon 24.10, released in October 2024, Centreon will release one major version per year.
For the last 6 years, Centreon has released two major versions per year, one in Spring and the other in Fall.
What’s new? Centreon will now release one major version every year, instead of every six months. This will be released in October each year.
Why change? Talking to its user base, Centreon reckons that whilst the previous cycle allowed a fast pace of new feature introduction, many IT Operations organizations can only afford a major software upgrade of their Centreon platform once a year, or even sometimes once every two years. Releasing one major version per year creates a better alignment with our user operational context.
The Centreon Release Cadence in detail:
- Each major version will be released in October.
- This version will be released for Open Source and Commercial editions.
- Minor versions, with bug fixes and minor improvements will be released on a monthly basis.
- A Service Pack version, cumulating all minor versions changes, will typically be delivered after six months
Software Lifecycle: new Long Term Support versions
Starting with Centreon 24.10, released in October 2024, Centreon will propose Long Term Support (LTS) versions that extends the support duration of its commercial editions to 3 years.
For the last two years, all major versions have been supported for two years. Before that, major versions were supported for 18 months.
What’s new? Commercial major versions released on even years will now be supported for 3 years (LTS versions) whilst versions released on odd years will be supported for 18 months. Centreon Open Source versions will be supported for 18 months.
Why change? We understand that some large IT organizations only want to upgrade the software version of their monitoring tools every two years. They will choose to upgrade to the LTS version of Centreon. At the same time, we observe that our vibrant open source user community is very agile and updates platforms more frequently, sometimes the very day of a new software release..
The Centreon Software Lifecycle in detail:
- All Open Source major versions are supported for 18 months.
- Commercial major versions released in 2024, 2026 and any even years are LTS versions (supported for 3 years).
- Commercial major versions released in 2025, 2027 and any odd years are supported for 18 months.
Please note: at the end of the support period, no more security fixes are provided, should a vulnerability be discovered. Such a software version is unsafe and should not be used. The Centreon platform should be upgraded to a supported version.
Should you upgrade to 24.04 or 24.10?
Centreon 24.04 was released at the end of April 2024, introducing the new Centreon Dashboards feature. This announcement today about our new Release Cadence and Software Lifecycle may impact your decision to upgrade your Centreon platform to 24.04.
If you are an Open Source user, this announcement does not impact your decision and you should upgrade to 24.04 to benefit from the new Centreon Dashboard feature and to start playing around with the Open Telemetry implementation, a Beta program accessible in this group here on The Watch.
If you are an agile organization, upgrading your platform every six months or every year, don’t hesitate to upgrade to 24.04 and benefit from the latest and greatest Centreon platform.
If you run a more complex IT organization, where major software upgrades can only be planned every two years, then you should wait for October this year and plan to upgrade to 24.10. You will then benefit from an LTS version and a 3-year support duration.
In summary, starting October 2024, Centreon will adopt an annual major version release and introduce Long Term Support (LTS) versions for commercial editions released in even years, with three years of support. We hope these changes will help you better plan and manage your Centreon platform upgrades.
Watch and share this video describing all the changes:
Click here if you want to read this article in French.