SonarQube Upgrade – OS-Platform Compatibility Verification Required

SonarQube Server / Community Build
1

Must-share information (formatted with Markdown):

  • which versions are you using (SonarQube Server / Community Build, Scanner, Plugin, and any relevant extension) - 2025.3
  • how is SonarQube deployed: zip, Docker, Helm: ZIP
  • what are you trying to achieve: Trying to upgrade to the latest release.
  • what have you tried so far to achieve this: Still Planning

Do not share screenshots of logs – share the text itself (bonus points for being well-formatted)!

Hello Team,

We intend to upgrade SonarQube from version 2025.3 to version 2026.4.
And Sonar-Scanner from SonarScanner CLI 7.1 to 8.1.

To ensure a smooth transition, we require confirmation of the following:

Is RHEL OS 7.9 compatible with SonarQube 2026.4 & Scanner-8.1?

Please advise at your earliest convenience.

Best regards,
Srinivas

2

Hi @Srini1,

SonarQube Server doesn’t require a specific version of a Linux distribution. As long as the distribution version can meet the specific requirements, it will be able to run the SonarQube Server Java processes. However, there is an important practical concern: RHEL 7.x reached end-of-life in June 2024. Beyond the security risk of running an EOL OS, this matters for SonarQube specifically because:

  • Java 21 distributions are increasingly dropping RHEL 7 support as it ages
  • SonarQube bundles Elasticsearch internally, which has its own Linux kernel and system prerequisites (documented here), running on an EOL kernel makes these harder to guarantee

SonarScanner CLI 8.1 is the correct version for SonarQube Server 2026.4, this combination is supported per the compatibility table. ✓

Two things to be aware of related to Java version:

  1. Java 21 is now required for both the SonarQube Server runtime and the scanner. Java 17 support was removed as of 2026.4. If you’re currently on Java 17, you must upgrade.
  2. A full JDK is required to run SonarQube Server, a JRE alone is no longer sufficient (this changed in 2026.1).

If your scanner uses JRE auto-provisioning (the default), the scanner’s Java requirement is handled automatically. If you’ve disabled auto-provisioning, ensure Java 21 is available on your scan host.

The full requirements for 2026.4 are documented at the Server host requirements and General requirements pages.

Hope that helps.

Best regards,

Stevan