Chapter 2. Overview of the upgrade process

The in-place upgrade process from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 can be summarized as follows:

Plan the upgrade
Review the system requirements and limitations. Determine whether your system is a good candidate for an in-place upgrade, or if you should perform a clean install of RHEL 8 instead.
Prepare for the upgrade
Complete required preparatory steps, including creating a backup of your RHEL 7 system, before beginning the upgrade process.
Run and review the pre-upgrade report
Run the pre-upgrade utility to generate a report that summarizes potential problems that must be resolved before the upgrade. Depending on the severity and impact of the found problems and the amount of work required to resolve them, proceed with one of the following outcomes:
- Remediate found problems and apply recommended solutions. Rerun the pre-upgrade utility to verify that all serious problems have been resolved. You might need to run the pre-upgrade report and resolve found issues multiple times before your system is ready for the upgrade.
- Switch to a clean installation of RHEL 8 instead of proceeding with the in-place upgrade.
Perform the in-place upgrade
Perform the upgrade to RHEL 8 and verify that the upgrade has been completed correctly. If the upgrade encounters issues that cannot be resolved, perform a rollback to your RHEL 7 backup.
Perform post-upgrade steps
Perform required post-upgrade steps to ensure that the RHEL 8 system is properly set up.