LinkedIn has replaced CentOS as their default server operating system choice with Azure Linux to power all of their server needs.
Driven by CentOS 7 going end-of-life and the changes around CentOS, LinkedIn decided to switch from CentOS-based servers to making use of Azure Linux, Microsoft’s Linux distribution formerly known as CBL-Mariner. Though likely not too surprising given that LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, but nevertheless interesting they opted for Azure Linux over going for CentOS Stream, RHEL, or other options for their server platforms. Azure Linux is what’s widely used by Microsoft within the Azure cloud and a variety of other Linux needs within the organization.
LinkedIn’s engineering team recently published an interesting blog post about their move from CentOS to Azure Linux as “LinkedIn’s operating system.” Their blog post is interesting as they dive into technical details on their deployment such as going for the XFS file-system even though originally it was not natively supported by Azure Linux. LinkedIn found XFS with software RAID to work out the best for their needs.
