In CentOS 7, an administrator can switch to different target (runlevel) at runtime by using the systemctl isolate command, which was done using the telinit command in CentOS 6. We can only isolate to those targets that have AllowIsolate=yes set in their unit files. For example, we can switch to multi-user.target from graphical.target with the following command:

# systemctl isolate multi-user.target

The preceding command will bring the user to runlevel 3. To switch back to runlevel 5, execute the following command:

# systemctl isolate graphical.target