Netsweeper is committed to providing our customers with the best platform for web content filtering. Part of this means ensuring that technology Netsweeper depends on is stable and secure. Netsweeper is far along in the project to migrate from CentOS 6 to CentOS 8. Some important things our customers should be aware of as we move closer to a GA release of Netsweeper on EL8:

Netsweeper 7

  • Netsweeper 7 on EL8 is nearing completion, with Netsweeper 7.1 GA soon to be released
  • Netsweeper 7 is also being released in EL6, but will be the last Netsweeper version to be released on EL6
    • This eases the transition of our customers from EL6 to EL8 (see below section on the upgrade path)
  • Netsweeper will not implement new features/functionality in any Netsweeper version on EL6 after December 2021 (when Netsweeper 8 on EL8 is released GA)
  • Netsweeper will continue to backport security fixes and critical fixes only and support to Netsweeper 7 on EL6 until March 2024 when upstream support ends
  • Netsweeper 7.1 on EL8 may not contain all features/functionality of previous Netsweeper versions
    • Netsweeper 7.1 is a transitional release, soon to be followed by Netsweeper 7.2
    • Customers that identify missing features/functionality in the 7.1 release are encouraged to open a ticket with support for escalation with the Netsweeper product team

Netsweeper 8

  • Netsweeper 8 will be the first release to ONLY be released on EL8
  • Netsweeper 8 is planned for development in early 2022
  • Customers running Netsweeper 7 on EL8 are always encouraged to upgrade to the latest GA release on Netsweeper 8 or above

Important Date Estimates:

  • May 2021: Development start in 7.2
  • June 2021: Netsweeper 7.1 GA on EL6
  • Q4 2021: Approximate date of Netsweeper 7.2 GA on EL6 and EL8
  • Q1 2022: Development start on Netsweeper 8
  • Q3 2022: Approximate date of Netsweeper 8 GA on EL8 only

Netsweeper is unable to support Enterprise Linux releases that are no longer supported by an upstream provider.

Future Upgrade Path

  • Customers are expected to plan the transition to CentOS 8 during the Netsweeper 7 development and release cycle
  • The Netsweeper WebAdmin will provide backwards compatibility allowing the Netsweeper 7 or below releases running EL6 to continue to work if they are loading configuration data from a Netsweeper WebAdmin running EL8 release on a higher version of the product
  • Reach out to your account manager and/or Netsweeper support to begin the discussion on your Netsweeper migration