DEVOPSdigest

SUSE is providing the foundation for both their traditional and growing containerized workloads with the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Service Pack 1.

Enterprises need the capability to design, deploy and run cloud-native, microservices-based applications as part of a DevOps approach. They must be able to deliver modern containerized applications with orchestration tools such as Kubernetes that enable secure and agile development and deployment from the edge to on-premise to hybrid to multi-cloud environments. At the same time, traditional systems are widely used to host mission-critical workloads like databases and ERP systems. Today's enterprises have multimodal IT infrastructures that run multimodal workloads, and SUSE Linux Enterprise is a bridge between traditional and cloud – the world's first multimodal operating system that enables enterprises to continually innovate, compete and grow.

"SUSE Linux Enterprise is a modern and modular OS that helps simplify multimodal IT, making traditional IT infrastructure efficient and providing an engaging platform for developers," said Thomas Di Giacomo, SUSE President of Engineering, Product and Innovation. "As a result, organizations can easily deploy and transition business-critical workloads across their core on-premise and public cloud environments. SUSE's open, open source approach means we work with our customers' preferred partners and vendors, minimizing customer disruption as they innovate and evolve their systems to meet business needs."

SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP1 advances the multimodal OS model by enhancing the core tenets of common code base, modularity and community development while hardening business-critical attributes such as optimized workloads, data security and reduced downtime.

Highlights include:

- Faster and easier transition from community Linux to enterprise Linux – It now takes just a few clicks for developers and operations to move an openSUSE Leap system to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Organizations also benefit from a tremendously enriched SUSE Package Hub, which is fast becoming a go-to destination for the community to build best-in-class applications with an enterprise platform. This brings the benefits of enterprise support for production systems to community openSUSE Leap-developed systems.

- Enhanced support for edge to HPC workloads – In Service Pack 1, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for Arm 15 has doubled the number of supported system-on-a-chip (SoC) processor options. This broadens support for storage and industrial automation applications on 64-bit Arm server and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. For 64-bit Raspberry Pi devices, it now supports full HDMI audio and video and provides an ISO image for faster installation.

- Optimize workloads and minimize data latency – As previously announced, with solutions running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on Intel Optane DC persistent memory and 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, businesses will be better able to address the challenges of massive data increases with greater speed and agility while incurring lower infrastructure and management costs.

- Improved hardware-based data security – Service Pack 1 features full support for AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) technology. First available as a developer preview in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15, SEV enables guest virtual machines to run in encrypted memory, helping protect them from memory scrape attacks from the hypervisor. SP1 also supports AMD Secure Memory Encryption (SME) which uses a single key to encrypt system memory.

- Reduced downtime for updates – Transactional updates (a tech preview in Service Pack 1) offer a significant reduction in the maintenance window for updates, increasing production uptime.

- Simplified installation with enhanced Modular+ – The Unified Installer, introduced in SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 to give customers a simplified way to engage with SUSE products, can be used to install more portfolio products, including SUSE Manager, SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time and SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service.