Base
Hardened build
minimal ports, security patches applied at build time
AlmaLinux 8 Arm64
Azure
Operating Systems
AlmaLinux 8 for 64 bit Arm, a free RHEL 8 compatible enterprise Linux base for Azure Cobalt 100 Arm virtual machines.
Overview
AlmaLinux 8 is a community owned enterprise Linux distribution produced by the AlmaLinux OS Foundation to be binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, running the 4.18 kernel and following the RHEL 8 lifecycle. This image is built on 8.10, the final AlmaLinux 8 point release, which remains in security maintenance until 31 May 2029 and continues to receive errata from the rolling AlmaLinux 8 repositories, so it is a supported release rather than an archived snapshot. This is the 64 bit Arm (AArch64) build, for the Arm based virtual machine sizes powered by the Azure Cobalt 100 processor, which pair strong per core performance with lower cost than comparable x86 sizes.
It suits teams keeping an established RHEL 8 baseline on Arm: migrating an existing RHEL 8 or CentOS 8 estate, web and application tiers, and long lived fleets certified against RHEL 8 and its AppStream module streams. Note that the RHEL 8 Arm kernel uses a 64k page size, where AlmaLinux 9 and 10 Arm use 4k, which matters for huge page and JVM or database memory tuning.
Why the cloudimg image
The cloudimg image is an AlmaLinux 8.10 Arm64 base brought fully up to date at build time and again immediately before capture, booted on its newest kernel with superseded kernels removed, with SELinux left in Enforcing mode and the root password locked. No credential is baked in: access is by the SSH key you choose at launch, root cannot log in over SSH, and SSH host keys and the machine id are regenerated per machine, so no two instances share a secret or an identity. Automatic updates are installed, armed and enabled, never auto rebooting, so the machine keeps patching itself. The stock AlmaLinux 8 Arm image leaves rpcbind enabled and bound on port 111; here it ships disabled, so SSH is the only network listener. BaseOS, AppStream and Extras stay enabled so you keep a working update path, no subscription or licence key is required, and 24/7 support is included.
Common uses
- RHEL 8 compatible application hosting on Azure Cobalt 100 Arm virtual machines
- Migrating an existing RHEL 8 or CentOS 8 Arm estate to Azure
- Long lived enterprise Linux fleets certified against RHEL 8
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