CentOS 7.2 LVM

Overview

CentOS Linux is a free, open source community rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, binary compatible with RHEL. This image is CentOS Linux 7.2.1511, the point release that corresponds to RHEL 7.2, and it stays there: the package repositories are pinned to the frozen 7.2.1511 vault, so updating the machine does not quietly walk it onto a later point release.

It is also cut with an LVM disk layout. The root filesystem lives on a logical volume inside a volume group rather than on a fixed raw partition, with the boot partition deliberately left plain because the bootloader reads the kernel before the volume manager is available. That means you can extend root onto a larger disk, pool a brand new disk under the same filesystem and reshape storage on a running machine with standard tooling, instead of being locked to the size and shape the image shipped with. It is the whole difference from the standard CentOS 7.2 image, which ships a plain single partition root.

One package on this image is not from the 7.2 vault, and it is disclosed rather than buried: CentOS 7.2.1511 predates the Azure provisioning agent, which first appears in CentOS 7.3, and without an agent an Azure machine cannot receive your SSH key at all. That single package is taken from the CentOS 7.3 snapshot and pinned by checksum; the build proves it is the only one and records the proof on the image itself.

CentOS Linux 7 reached end of life on 30 June 2024 and receives no further upstream security updates, so this image is patched only to the last packages that exist for 7.2.1511 and is provided for legacy migration workloads. Plan a migration to a supported distribution for anything that must stay secure.

Common uses

• Lift and shift of an estate whose machines already use an LVM root, so the storage layout matches
• Running software whose support statement names CentOS or RHEL 7.2 specifically
• Workloads that need the root volume grown or spread across extra disks without rebuilding the machine