DEVOPSdigest

SUSE® announced new capabilities across its Linux, cloud native, and edge portfolio of enterprise infrastructure solutions to help unlock the infinite potential of open source in enterprises.

SUSE's new capabilities support organizations to transform their businesses by providing faster time-to-value and reduced operational costs.

"The power of choice in today's complex IT landscape is so essential. At the same time, recent market consolidation developments are stripping many enterprises of their options," said Dr. Thomas Di Giacomo, Chief Technology and Product Officer at SUSE. "With our uniquely open and ecosystem-first approach, SUSE is maintaining our long-held commitment to offering customers the flexibility they need with their data center infrastructure to drive results for their businesses."

SUSE announced the following enhancements, innovations, and future roadmap for SUSE Linux Enterprise:

- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 Service Pack 6: With this update, SUSE future-proofs IT workloads with a new Long Term Service Pack Support Core providing the longest-term support period in the enterprise Linux market, now ending in 2037. Designed to simplify IT operations across the data center, cloud and Edge, SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Service Pack 6 (SP6) lowers the risk and cost of adopting new technologies and ensures business continuity by minimizing planned and unplanned service outages. It includes an updated 6.4 kernel version and new libraries, including OpenSSL 3.1. Built on a certified secure software supply chain and adhering to the highest standards, SUSE Linux Enterprise enables security in compliance with the strictest regulations.

- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 SP6: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 SP6 provides SAP customers and partners with the most popular secure and reliable Linux platform for running their mission critical SAP workloads, from the data center to the cloud. This release also delivers customers access to the latest innovations from Trento , an open-source web application, developed by SUSE, enabling better protection of SAP infrastructures by diagnosing common configuration mistakes and validating systems against SUSE best practices.

- SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 6.0: SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 6.0 is an immutable, lightweight and secure open source host operating system optimized for containerized and virtualized workloads. It simplifies standalone container deployments, optimizing it for embedded and integrated appliances, while also providing a stable platform for Kubernetes deployments. This release introduces support for full disk encryption, strengthening customer data security, both inside and outside the data center. Designed to run anywhere, SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 6.0 enables organizations to transcend geographical and operational constraints, while adapting to diverse deployment scenarios.

- SUSE Manager 5.0: Supporting over 16 different Linux distributions, SUSE Manager 5.0 is the industry's leading multi-Linux management solution, delivering from a single console automated patch and compliance management for any Linux, anywhere and at any scale. SUSE Manager itself is containerized for increased resilience, scalability and portability, as well as simple installation. This release also adds remote attestation capabilities for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP6 to ensure customers can prove their remote environments are running in a Confidential Computing environment for enhanced compliance.

SUSE remains fully committed to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and is already working on an additional set of innovations for Enterprise Linux by launching the next major release of its flagship business critical Linux platform, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 16 in 2025.

SUSE announced enhancements to its enterprise container management, observability, container security, and virtualization offerings:

- Rancher Prime 3.1 - This release adds market leading observability based upon acquisition of StackState. Rancher Prime 3.1 also enhances AI support with virtual cluster provisioning, promotes cluster sharing without isolation compromise, and optimizes resource costs like GPUs. Additionally, Rancher Prime's Application Collection for Kubernetes now includes KubeFlow, offering a secure AI stack, ensuring data control and leveraging community-driven solutions. Finally, Version 3.1 extends lifecycle support to 24 months with Long Term Support (LTS) Prime and introduces a 3-year LTS Core option for RKE2 and K3s.

- NeuVector Prime 5.4 - Building on the Rancher Prime UI extension released earlier this year, NeuVector Prime 5.4 will now embed scan results directly into Rancher Prime resources like pods and nodes, along with a scan button. This release also introduces a new compliance reporting framework, expediting the availability of new/updated compliance reports (e.g., DISA-STIG). Additionally, NeuVector Prime 5.4 introduces distributed denial-of-service network attack protections, triggering alerts and blocking when thresholds for maximum connection rates or bandwidth usage are exceeded.

- Harvester 1.3.1: The latest release of SUSE's cloud native virtualization platform offers customers a path to modernization, providing customers a transition from legacy VMware-based and other virtual machine workloads in favor of modern cloud native solutions. Designed to significantly improve AI and other workload performance and extend Harvester's capabilities to a wider range of hardware platforms, this release ensures seamless integration and optimized resource utilization in diverse computing environments. This release introduces critical advancements in AI and hardware compatibility, including increased support for cutting-edge vGPU and Arm architectures.

SUSE announced continuing enhancements delivered in the SUSE Edge and SUSE ATIP offerings:

- SUSE Edge 3.0: SUSE Edge 3.0 is optimized to run in resource-constrained, remote locations with intermittent internet connectivity, making it ideal for embedded devices. SUSE Edge is built-on SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro, leverages CNCF-certificated Kubernetes distributions, and supports the management and execution of containers, virtual machines, and microservices. With Edge 3.0, SUSE brings the power of Rancher Prime Kubernetes management, NeuVector Prime cloud native container security, and a fully validated, edge-optimized, and integrated cloud native stack providing full lifecycle management of edge devices at scale.

- SUSE Adaptive Telco Infrastructure Platform 3.0: This latest release is delivering a commercial implementation of Linux Foundation Europe's Project Sylva, enabling CSPs to realize lower energy consumption and a commitment to open-source principles. This release also introduces Edge Image Builder, which enables customized deployment artifacts to create edge clusters in the most remote locations. ATIP 3.0 also provides zero-trust bare metal cluster provisioning using Cluster API (CAPI) and Metal3 (metal kubed).

As businesses everywhere continue to realize the limitless potential of AI, SUSE also unveiled its AI strategy and roadmap focusing on its commitment to enterprise AI that is open, secure and compliant. This includes the SUSE AI Early Access Program, a program for customers and partners that will guide the future of secure open source AI in the enterprise.