The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Hybrid Cloud Team announces the following CMS Gold Image (GI) updates for September 2026:
September 2026 GI Updates
Gold Image Retention Change in February 2027
- GIs are version controlled and previous versions are currently kept for a year. During the February 2027 release, the GI Team will lower the retention from 1 year to 3 months.
- Always use the most current version of the GI. Sometimes in production, an older image must be used to maintain consistency between the production and non-production environments. The GI Team has allowed the 3-month buffer to accommodate this.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) GI Consolidation in October 2026
- After the October 2026 GI release, legacy GIs will no longer be available. Application Delivery Organizations (ADOs) in the legacy environments must use the standard image and tag it appropriately so that the legacy configurations will deploy on the first setup of the instance.
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To learn how to use the legacy configuration on the standard image, visit Unified Gold Images on cloud.cms.gov (CCG).
Newly Available GIs
The following GIs are now available:
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Oracle Cloud: Windows 2022 (WIN2022) and Oracle Enterprise Linux 9 (OEL9).
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Google Cloud Platform (GCP): WIN2022 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (RHEL 9).
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Azure Commercial: Windows 2019 (WIN2019), WIN2022, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL 8), and RHEL 9.
Decommissioned Components and Operating Systems
TrendMicro, Amazon Linux 2 (AL2), and New Relic
- ADOs should transition all TrendMicro instances to CrowdStrike as soon as possible. If you have any questions, please submit a Hybrid Cloud support ticket to contact the CrowdStrike Team.
- The last AL2 GI has expired and will be deleted in accordance with policy. AL2 GIs are no longer available.
- The New Relic enterprise license ended in June 2026. OIT has moved from New Relic to Datadog.
- If you have a silver image that needs to use New Relic, you must install it when you build the silver image. For more information, visit Introduction to Gold Image.
Subscribe to GI Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) Topics
- ADOs can subscribe to an Amazon SNS topic to be notified when new GIs are released in AWS and Azure.
- You can also subscribe to the Amazon SNS topic with a Lambda function that will run when a notification is published, such as to launch a new instance dependent on the newly published Amazon Machine Image (AMI).
- To learn how to subscribe, visit Subscribing to a Gold Image Amazon SNS Topic on CCG.
Amazon Linux 2023 (AL2023) Advanced Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) Machine (ARM) GI Now Available in AWS Commercial and AWS GovCloud
- ADO teams can now use the regular AL2023 GI or the ARM instance for potential cost savings (20%–40% of the cost of your Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance).
- The Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)-optimized version is now available.
- Internal testing on our Tenable instance showed a cost savings of more than 30% (see the image below) with no other changes and the same level of usage.
 Gold Image Accessibility
CMS GI availability is based on each team's details in BaseCamp. If your team wants to request a new CMS GI, please open a Hybrid Cloud support ticket and contact your assigned Hosting Coordinator.
For more information about CMS GIs, please review the available Gold Image documentation.
Questions or Concerns
For questions or concerns, please contact your assigned Hosting Coordinator or submit a Hybrid Cloud support ticket.
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