Maybe I've always worked at larger employers than most, but a one year surprise to reevaluate and transition your operating system sounds incredibly disruptive when the original promise was support through 2029 and the "successor" is very different.
In my experience major updates like this are discussed annually with eval, testing, and milestones set weeks and months apart. The transitions are often pushed a year or more when issues come up. Resources are dedicated to all of this.
It sounds like there are a lot of similar options with relatively easy transitions (away from Red Hat), but you still have to choose who you trust going forward and carryout the transition.
If you’re relying on the free offering that’s competitive directly with their enterprise offering and your organization is so large that it’s going to take over a year to switch - you should have probably been paying for RHEL to begin with. My midsize outfit that was running from top to bottom on centos did everything you described over the course of about 2 months to switch to Alma Linux. Hundreds of servers managed by an amount of guys I can count on one hand.
Sorry not sorry, but large outfits expecting to coast on a free offering don’t get sympathy from me.
In my experience major updates like this are discussed annually with eval, testing, and milestones set weeks and months apart. The transitions are often pushed a year or more when issues come up. Resources are dedicated to all of this.
It sounds like there are a lot of similar options with relatively easy transitions (away from Red Hat), but you still have to choose who you trust going forward and carryout the transition.