Senior Vice President – Head of Platforms & Development
Senior DevOps Engineer & Consultant
As an Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) infrastructure professional, you know that keeping your systems secure, performant, and supportable is non-negotiable. But with the April 2025 Oracle Critical Patch Update (CPU – https://www.oracle.com/security-alerts/cpuapr2025.html) cycle behind us, it’s clear that continuing to run EBS on Oracle Linux 7 (OL7) is becoming increasingly risky and impractical.
Let’s talk about why upgrading from OL7 to OL8 should now be a top priority – and how tools like Leapp can make it less painful than you might think.
OL7 Extended Support
Let’s not sugarcoat it: skipping or delaying Critical Patch Updates exposes your EBS environment to known vulnerabilities. Oracle CPUs often contain dozens of security fixes across database, middleware, and infrastructure layers.
But if your underlying OS can't support the latest tools – because you're stuck on OL7 –, then you’re effectively locked out of applying these fixes.
The April 2025 CPU and ORDS update introduced the requirement of running OL8. OL7 reached its end of premium support on December 31st, 2024, and is since in extended support:
Extended Support does include security fixes but no backports of new versions of ORDS as part of the official Oracle yum repositories (see https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/elsp-lifetime-069338.pdf and https://forums.oracle.com/ords/apexds/post/ords-25-1-rpm-for-ol7-missing-6532). Therefore, the latest version of ORDS 25.1 introduced the requirement of having to upgrade to OL8. OL8 also has the benefit of receiving newer versions of tools such as Git, Python 3, and UEK7 (https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/post/reasons-to-install-uek7).
In-Place Upgrade from OL7 to OL8
Here’s the good news: you don’t have to rebuild your servers from scratch.
Oracle’s Leapp tool is a supported method to perform in-place upgrades from OL7 to OL8. It preserves:
- the EBS application tier and configuration,
- existing user data and settings,
- and most system and application dependencies (subject to review).
The upgrade involves several stages:
- Assessment – Leapp pre-upgrade scans your system and flags potential issues.
- Planning – You remediate blockers, e.g., by removing obsolete packages or replacing unsupported drivers.
- Execution – Leapp upgrade performs the OS upgrade with rollback checkpoints.
- Post-checks – Validate your services and EBS stack functionality post-upgrade.
Oracle has documented the process extensively (see: https://docs.oracle.com/en/learn/ol-linux-leapp/index.html#introduction). Just make sure to snapshot or backup your VM/container beforehand.
Tips for a Successful OL7 to OL8 Upgrade
- Test in non-prod first: Validate all your EBS tiers, including custom code and third-party agents.
- Patch before upgrading: Apply any pending OL7 updates to reduce post-upgrade surprises.
- Confirm compatibility of apps: Especially for Java, WebLogic, ORDS, and monitoring agents.
Why no OL9?
With Oracle Linux 9 already released and it being the latest Oracle Linux version available, the question might come up why you should not upgrade the version of your operating systems even further from 8 to 9?
The reason behind is simple as Oracle has not yet certified EBS with OL9.
Don't Wait
If your EBS environment is still on OL7, it's time to plan and execute your upgrade to OL8. Not just for compliance – but for stability, and future readiness.