Overview

Beginning with the 2024 4th quarter release of BillMax, BillMax has provided a CentOS 7 release as well as a Debian 12 release. As of March 31, 2025 BillMax will no longer provide CentOS 7 releases. CentOS 7 End of Life (EOL) was June 30, 2024 and each company is encouraged to transition to using a Debian server. This change was necessitated by changes to the CentOS release cycle where stable enterprise point releases will no longer be maintained by IBM.

For existing BillMax CentOS 7^® customers, the upgrade path is different than a normal upgrade where BillMax can be updated in place with an installation/upgrade script. Instead of a upgrade in place, another server running Debian will have to be deployed where BillMax will be installed as a new installation. Then the database files will be migrated and converted from the existing CentOS server to the Debian server. Finally, various conversion scripts are run to update the BillMax database schema.

Switching servers and operating systems involves quite a few extra considerations. In addition to BillMax itself, any external configuration or subsystems that BillMax relies on will need to be addressed. These subsystems include but are not limited to Email, Printing, and service provisioning. These topics are not covered here. Please contact BillMax (support@billmax.com) for further assistance.

To convert to Debian, the process is to deploy Billmax on a new server, configure that server as needed, migrate the database as needed. All the while testing the result. Once satisfied that the system operates correctly, then the final step is a suspension of activities on the CentOS server followed by one last data migration. If successful the old server is shut down and operations resume on the new server. If not, operations resume on the CentOS server and another attempt is made once adjustments have been made.