The future of Opalstack has begun.
Our new operating system is almost here! 🎉
After months of work our new operating system is almost here and over the next few weeks we will begin opening up VPS and shared servers running on AlmaLinux 9 instead of CentOS 7. Since your applications are far more complicated than our tests could reasonably be we will be slowly rolling out upgraded servers as we get more confident. All of our internal tests have passed but we’ve done this long enough to know that only the real world is a sufficient test plan.
We evaluated a few different Linux distributions including Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, and Oracle Enterprise Linux. We chose AlmaLinux because it has gained widespread adoption across the hosting industry making migrations to Opalstack faster and easier.
New shared servers running AlmaLinux 9 should be available in all of our shared service regions before the end of the year. VPS running AlmaLinux 9 will be available slightly earlier than the shared servers and will be available in all of the locations we support VPS now.
What’s new? 🌟
Here’s a list of some of the software versions that are available on the new system, with the current versions included for comparison:
- PostgreSQL 11/14 → PostgreSQL 17
- MariaDB 10.6 → Percona MySQL 8.4
- Ruby 3.2 → Ruby 3.3
- System Python 2.7 → Python 3.9
- ImageMagick 6 → ImageMagick 7
- Default PHP 7.3 → PHP 8.3
- Apache 2.4.6 → Apache 2.4.57
- Rust 1.72 → Rust 1.75
- Git 1.83 → Git 2.43
- Kernel 3.10.0 → Kernel 5.14.0
- Hundreds of system library updates
(an earlier version of this post had MySQL 8.0 and PostgreSQL 16 as the new database versions, but since then MySQL 8.4 had a point release and PostgreSQL 17 was released)
How can you get started with the new OS?
The new operating system will only be available on newly-provisioned hardware; our existing servers will not be upgraded. If you’re an existing customer and want to take advantage of the new operating system then you must either migrate your account to one of the new servers or purchase an additional hosting plan located on one of the new servers.
Note that the following software is not supported on the new operating system:
- PHP versions earlier than 8.0
- Python versions earlier than 3.9
- Ruby versions under 3.3
If you have applications using these software versions then you will need to upgrade them to a supported version before you can migrate them to the new operating system.
We’ll send out an update when the new servers are ready for you to migrate!
There’s more to come! ✨
This is just the first step toward the next generation of the Opalstack platform. Just as we’ve grown and evolved the platform over the last five and a half years, we’ll continue to do so by introducing new features made possible by the new operating system.