Compute Engine: Deprecation of Debian 7 and Backports Debian 7 Preconfigured Images
Shanmugam Kulandaivel
Debian 7 “wheezy” and its corresponding “backports” preconfigured image made available by Google Cloud Platform for use in Google Compute Engine will be deprecated on May 31st 2016. Both of these images will be available in the 'deprecated' state in the debian-cloud project.
For customers using Local SSDs with the NVMe interface, the NVMe Debian 7 image will be deprecated at a later date after the NVMe driver is available in Debian 8. We are working with the community to upstream the patches related to NVMe.
Why are Debian 7 and Backports Debian 7 being deprecated?
Debian 7 is currently in the Long-Term Support stage of the Debian lifecycle. Debian 8 "jessie" is the current stable release of Debian.
What changes once the images are deprecated?
Google will not make any updates to these images after the deprecation date. Users are responsible for updating both the operating system and Compute Engine software that is installed on the image. Google does not provide assurance that Compute Engine guest software will continue to work or that all new features will be supported on deprecated images.
Debian 7 and Backports Debian 7 images will not be displayed in the preconfigured images list in the Cloud Console. Users that need to create an instance using one of these images can navigate to the Images list, click the ‘show deprecated images’ option, select the appropriate image, and create an instance with that image.
Debian 7 and Backports Debian 7 images will not be listed when users run gcloud compute images list. Users can use gcloud compute images list --show-deprecated to see these images.
What should users do?
We recommend that current Debian 7 and Backports Debian 7 users upgrade to Debian 8 preconfigured images, which are available by Google for use in Compute Engine. Alternatively, users can upgrade Debian 7 instances to Debian 8 in-place, using the instructions on the Debian website.
Will new or modified Google Compute Engine features be supported post the deprecation date?
Google will not make any updates to the Debian 7 and Backports Debian 7 images to update the Compute Engine guest software. Users can manually update Compute Engine guest software by downloading the source code for required Compute Engine software available on GitHub. However, official support for this software in Debian 7 and Backports Debian 7 will not be provided past the deprecation date.
Will security updates be made available for Debian 7 and Backports Debian 7 post the deprecation date?
Users are responsible for applying all appropriate operating system security patches if and when they are made available from The Debian Project. The Debian Security team stopped issuing security updates on April 26th, 2016to focus on Debian 8 and subsequent versions. The Debian LTS team plan to provide updates until May 31st, 2018, but might not update all packages in the archive.
Questions?
Please post your questions to Google Compute Engine Discussion Group: gce-discussion