SuSE Linux Enterprise Server

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a world-class, secure open source server operating system, built to power physical, virtual and cloud-based mission-critical workloads. Service Pack 2 further raises the bar in helping organisations to accelerate innovation, enhance system reliability, meet tough security requirements and adapt to new technologies.

Key Features:

Hardware Platforms

• Open the doors for broad hardware and virtualisation support with higher compute density, less power consumption and economical hardware using new ARM based SoC systems.
• Improve infrastructure agility with support for Intel’s newest and most powerful Xeon Processor Scalable family.
• Increase responsiveness with added support for the latest AMD EPYC and Ryzen processors.
• Support data transaction and workload size growth for very large HANA workloads on POWER using extended virtual address space.
• Optimise workloads and increase data security for z Systems with SUSE KVM on z and enhanced cryptographic support.

High Availability

• Improved geo recovery management with a geo cluster bootstrap kit that simplifies cluster implementation.
• Increase visibility and improve management of your high availability environment with an updated graphical user interface.
• Faster time to value with quick start guidesfor the High Availability and Geo Clustering extensions to help you get up and running quickly.

Performance & Security

• Improve application performance with fast local NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) and remote storage devices with NVMe over Fabrics (NoF). Using NVMe you can fully exploit the benefits of modern solid-state memory technology.
• Increase database performance with enhanced NV-DIMM (Non-Volatile Dual In-line Memory Module) block device support.
• Optimise more SAP applications for performance with configuration and tuning support for SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise and SAP Business Objects.
• Expand security capabilities with updated support for TPM (Trusted Platform Module) 2.0 and expanded key server support for SAP system volumes with KMIP industry standard.

SuSE Linux Enterprise Server - Features

Key Features: 

Create and Support an Agile IT Infrastructure

• Containers: Linux Containers are great ways to build, deploy and manage applications. Linux Containers and container engine from open source Docker project are supported in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 for your production environments.
• Just Enough Operating System (JeOS): SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a minimised form factor of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. JeOS is delivered as minimised, ready-to-run virtual images to make the virtualisation deployment more efficient. JeOS is also delivered as a KIWI template for customers and partners to use to start golden images.
• ARM AArch64 and Raspberry Pi: Improve power efficiency using ARM 64’s low power consumption and efficient design for your servers and network infrastructure.

Deploy Mission Critical Services

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching.
• Open vSwitch with DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit): Efficiently implement virtual network functions using Open vSwitch with DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit) that accelerates the user space data plane and provides the packet processing capabilities needed for Software Defined Networking (SDN) & Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) solutions.
• NVDIMM: Reduce down-time & improve I/O performance utilising persistent system memory applications. 
• VMware Tools Integration:VMware drivers and tools (open-vm-tools) are now fully supported and integrated into SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 in an all-in-one package with their performance fine-tuned.

Continuously Improve Your IT Infrastructure

• NVMe over Fabrics: Improve application performance with fast local NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) and remote storage devices with NVMe over Fabrics (NoF). Using NVMe you can fully exploit the benefits of modern solid-state memory technology.
• Intel Skylake: Improve system performance using Intel Skylake technology to deliver high performance graphics, improved system responsiveness and longer battery life.
• The Subscription Management Tool (SMT): SMT helps large organizations centrally receive patches and updates for their SUSE Linux Enterprise software. It provides our customers a way to easily migrate and gain much simpler and faster access to updates and patches.
• Network Teaming: Network Teaming is a technology that applies to various methods of combining multiple network connections in parallel. Similar to Network Bonding, which is already supported in SUSE Linux Enterprise 12, the Network Teaming feature increases throughput beyond what a single connection could sustain and provides redundancy to increase network uptime.

SuSE Linux Enterprise Server - System Requirements

Minimum Linux server system requirements for installation

• Local Installation: 512 MiB RAM, 512 MiB Swap recommended
• 2 GiB available disk space (more recommended, 8.5 GiB for all patterns)
• 16 GiB for snapshot/rollback of the OS

Recommendations for specific uses:

• 512 MiB to 4 GiB RAM, at least 256 MiB per CPU
• 4 GiB hard-disk space, 16 GiB for snapshot/rollback of the OS
• Network interface (Ethernet, wireless or modem)
• For Xen virtual host server–at least 512 MiB RAM for each virtual host server.

Supported processor platforms

• AMD64/Intel 64 (x86-64)
• IBM z Systems (s390x)
• POWER (ppc64le)
• AArch64 (ARMv8)