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Version revision history
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25th February, 2022: 4.3 Beta 1 release
About SUSE Manager 4.3
SUSE Manager 4.3, the latest release from SUSE based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP4 and the Uyuni Project, delivers a best-in-class open source infrastructure management and automation solution that lowers costs, identifies risk, enhances availability and reduces complexity.
As a key component of a software-defined infrastructure, SUSE Manager 4.3 delivers the following new or enhanced capabilities to your Edge, Cloud & Datacenter environments.
Expanded operating system support
Adding to its extensive list of Linux distributions, SUSE Manager 4.3 introduces support for Debian 11, further enabling the management of all your Enterprise Linux distributions from a single tool – no matter where they are located.
SUSE Manager now supports the management of SLE, SLE-Micro, RHEL, openSUSE, Oracle Linux, CentOS, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, and Amazon Linux.
Scaling SUSE Manager
With the "SUSE Manager Hub" multi-server architecture we are gradually introducing a framework that allows you to scale SUSE Manager deployments to hundreds of thousands of nodes using tiered management servers.
SUSE Manager 4.3 further introduces new features in Hub framework, optimizing it for the edge deployments, and fill the gaps by introducing centralized reporting and enhancing ISSv2 by adding capabilities to transfer OS Images and configuration channels from Hub to peripheral servers.
With ever growing Linux footprints you need your management tool be able to scale to tens of thousands of Linux devices and beyond. With the performance and scalability enhancements in 4.3, your SUSE Manager deployment can easily scale in your environment in any direction, while providing better performance than any previous version even in very large-scale environments.
This allows you the flexibility to grow your infrastructure as required by your business needs, with the peace of mind that SUSE Manager will be able to manage your large estate, and the cost implications of growing their footprint will not be exaggeratedly high.
Before you begin , you should always get advice from a SUSE partner, sales engineer, or consultant.
Updating and Configuration Management
With SUSE Manager 4.3, one of the goal is to make typical system administration tasks even more easier. There will be number of improvments when it comes to SSM, action status at given time, to name a few.
Interoperability
One of the main areas that we wanted to improve with SUSE Manager 4.3 is interoperability. Our goal was to make SUSE Manager play well with the existing tools that users already have.
Salt bundle
One effort in this regard has been around salt. SUSE Manager 4.3 comes with salt-bundle. The Salt Bundle can be used on systems that already run another Salt Minion or systems which do not meet Salt’s requirements or already provide a newer salt version that is used instead of the version provided by SUSE Manager.
Containerization
Another goal that we want to achieve in a long run is to enable SUSE Manager to be deployed in container-only environments, independently from the base OS. Allow SUSE Manager components (specifically Proxies/Retail Branch servers) to run in more resource-constrained environments. Edge market is our main audience here with this effort. It will allow users to install SUSE Manager components on top of kubernetes, increasing flexibility and future viability
Enabling SUSE Manager Proxy and Retail Branch Servers to also run in containers, is in SUSE Manager 4.3 scope.
HTTP API
SUSE Manager is seeing more& more use in automated scenarios, where it is a part of a bigger system and driven via its APIs - possibly but not necessarily a CI system.
The XMLRPC protocol has a very low barrier of entry for some use cases, notably Python programs, but as of recent years the industry has favored REST and, in general, HTTP APIs in terms of popularity and tooling support.
With 4.3, we have decided to provide an HTTP API via plain JSON, in addition to the XMLRPC protocol.
Keep Informed
You can stay up-to-date regarding information about SUSE Manager and SUSE products:
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Check the newest SUSE Manager 4.3 release notes
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Read the SUSE Blog
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Use the SUSE Best Practices for SUSE Manager
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Join the SUSE Manager discussion forum
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Join the upstream Uyuni community and monthly community meetings
Installation
Requirements
SUSE Manager Server 4.3 is provided through SUSE Customer Center and can be installed with the unified installer for SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Service Pack 4. It is available for x86-64, POWER (ppc64le), or IBM Z (s390x). No separate SUSE Linux Enterprise subscription is required.
With the adoption of a unified installer in SUSE Linux Enterprise 15, system roles are used to customize the installation for each product. The unified installer provides an easier way to install the operating system and the SUSE Manager Server application together with specific pre-configured system settings. This addresses the need for enterprise deployments to standardize on the base operating system as well as on specific storage setups.
PostgreSQL is the only supported database. Using a remote PostgreSQL database is not supported.
Update from previous versions of SUSE Manager Server
In-place update from SUSE Manager Server 4.1 and 4.2 is supported.
All connected clients will continue to run and remain unchanged.
For detailed upgrading instructions, see the Upgrade Guide on https://documentation.suse.com/suma/4.3/.
Major changes since SUSE Manager Server 4.2
Salt 3004
Salt has been upgraded to upstream version 3004, plus a number of patches, backports and enhancements by SUSE, for the SUSE Manager Server, Proxy and Client Tools.
We intend to regularly upgrade Salt to more recent versions.
For more details about changes in your manually-created Salt states, see the Salt 3004 upstream release notes.
Reporting Database
The reporting database provides Uyuni data used for reports in a simplified schema, and is accessible by any reporting tool with support for SQL databases as content sources.
This new database database is isolated from the one used for the Uyuni Server, and created automatically.
The uyuni-setup-reportdb-user
can create new users which have access to the data.
For more information on this topic, see Hub reporting.
PostgreSQL 14
The database engine has been updated from PostgreSQL 13 to PostgreSQL 14, which brings a number of performance and reliability improvements. A detailed changelog is available upstream.
To prevent inconsistent configurations and data on upgrade or update, SUSE Manager 4.3 will refuse to start until the database migration from PostgreSQL 13 to PostgreSQL 14 has completed successfully.
Base system upgrade
The base system was upgraded to SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP4.
Dropped features
CaaSP support
We had added CaaSP support in previous versions but unfortunately, CaaSP got disconnected and no further development will be happening there.
The currently released versions of CaaSP will soon be going EOL and this naturally implies that we should also remove all the bits related to it from SUSE Manager.
Deprecated features
Traditional Stack has been deprecated
With SUSE Manager 4.3 release, traditional stack has been deprecated.
The release that follows SUSE Manager 4.3 will not support traditional clients and traditional proxies, and is planned for 2023. We encourage all new deployments to use Salt clients and Salt proxies exclusively, and to migrate existing traditional clients and proxies to Salt.
Upgrade
Upgrading with SUSE Manager Proxy
SUSE Manager Server 4.3 works with SUSE Manager Proxy 4.1/4.2 and SUSE Manager Retail Branch Server 4.1/4.2 but only for upgrade purposes. The product is not intented to be used in a mixed-version scenario in production. When upgrading, upgrade the SUSE Manager Server first, followed by the SUSE Manager Proxy and Retail Branch Servers.
For instructions on upgrading when SUSE Manager Proxy or SUSE Manager Retail Branch Servers are in use, see the Upgrade Guide on https://documentation.suse.com/suma/4.3/.
Upgrading with inter-server synchronization
When upgrading, upgrade the ISS master first, followed by the ISS slaves.
Support
Supportconfig confidentiality disclaimer
When handling Service Requests, supporters and engineers may ask for the output of the supportconfig
tool from SUSE Manager Server or clients.
This disclaimer applies:
Detailed system information and logs are collected and organized in a manner that helps reduce service request resolution times. Private system information can be disclosed when using this tool. If this is a concern, please prune private data from the log files. Several startup options are available to exclude more sensitive information. Supportconfig data is used only for diagnostic purposes and is considered confidential information.
When you run supportconfig
on the SUSE Manager Server, the output will contain information about your clients as well as about the Server.
In particular, debug data for the subscription matching feature contains a list of registered clients, their installed products, and some minimal hardware information (such as the CPU socket count).
It also contains a copy of the subscription data available from the SUSE Customer Center.
If this is a concern, please prune data in the subscription-matcher
directory in the spacewalk-debug
tarball before sending it to SUSE.
Support for SLE Micro
SLE Micro is only supported as a Salt minion. The traditional stack will not be supported.
Supportability of embedded software components
All software components embedded into SUSE Manager, like Cobbler for PXE booting, are only supported in the context of SUSE Manager. Stand-alone usage (e. g. Cobbler command-line) is not supported.
Support for older products
The SUSE Manager engineering team provides 'best effort' support for products past their end-of-life date. For more information about product support, see Product Support Lifecycle.
Support for products that are considered past their end-of-life is limited to assisting you to bring production systems to a supported state. This could be either by migrating to a supported service pack or by upgrading to a supported product version.
Support for RHEL, CentOS and Oracle Linux Clients
SUSE Manager supports only the latest RHEL 7 and 8 minor release clients. Older minor releases might still work but will only be supported on a limited and reasonable-effort basis.
The same rule applies to CentOS, Oracle Linux and SLES Expanded Support.
CentOS Stream is explicitly not supported by SUSE. You may try to register CentOS Stream clients by:
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Using the
spacewalk-common-channels
command-line tool to synchronize the product -
Using the CentOS Stream client tools from the upstream Uyuni Project.
Support for Ubuntu Clients
SUSE Manager supports Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and 20.04 LTS clients using Salt. Traditional clients are not supported.
Support for Ubuntu is limited to a growing list of specific features. For a detailed list of supported features, check the Client Configuration Guide.
Support for Debian Clients
SUSE Manager supports Debian 10 "Buster" & Debian 11 "bullseye" clients using Salt. Traditional clients are not supported.
Support for Debian is limited to a growing list of specific features. For a detailed list of supported features, check the Client Configuration Guide.
L1 support for RHEL and CentOS ppc64le clients
For RHEL and CentOS clients on the ppc64le architecture, SUSE Manager offers the same functionality that is supported for the x86_64 architecture. Client tools are not available yet from SCC but the CentOS 7 client tools from Uyuni can be enabled using spacewalk-common-channels
. CentOS 8 is dead.
RHEL and CentOS ppc64le are only supported at L1 level support. L1 support is limited to problem determination, which means technical support designed to provide compatibility information, usage support, on-going maintenance, information gathering, and basic troubleshooting using available documentation. At the time of writing, any problems or bugs specific to RHEL and CentOS on ppc64le will only be fixed on a best-effort basis.
Please contact your Sales Engineer or SUSE Consulting if you need additional support or features for these operating systems.
Browser support
Microsoft Internet Explorer fails to render some parts of the SUSE Manager Web UI and is therefore not a supported browser, in any version.
Please refer to the General Requirements for a list of supported browsers.
SUSE Manager installation
The SUSE Unified Installer, and installing SUSE Manager on top of SLE JeOS, are the only supported mechanisms to install SUSE Manager.
Known issues
Python2 clients
Bootstrapping python2 clients from WebUI/API does not work for now.
Registering Spacewalk 2.x/Red Hat Satellite 5.x clients to SUSE Manager as Salt minions
If a client machine is running the Red Hat Satellite 5.x agent, registering it to SUSE Manager as a Salt minion will fail due to package conflicts.
Registering a RH Satellite 5.x client as a SUSE Manager traditional client works fine.
Registering a SUSE Manager traditional client as a SUSE Manager Salt minion will also work.
Works | Fails |
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RH Satellite 5.x ⇒ SUSE Manager traditional |
RH Satellite 5.x ⇒ SUSE Manager Salt minion |
SUSE Manager traditional ⇒ SUSE Manager Salt minion |
In order to register Red Hat Satellite 5.x clients to SUSE Manager as Salt minions, you will need to modify the bootstrap script to remove the Satellite agent packages first.
Spacewalk 2.x and Oracle Spacewalk 2.x clients will show the same behavior as Red Hat Satellite 5.x clients
Providing feedback
If you encounter a bug in any SUSE product, please report it through your support contact or in the SUSE Forums:
Resources
Latest product documentation: https://documentation.suse.com/suma/4.3/.
Technical product information for SUSE Manager: https://www.suse.com/products/suse-manager/
These release notes are available online: https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/
Visit https://www.suse.com for the latest Linux product news from SUSE.
Visit https://www.suse.com/download-linux/source-code.html for additional information on the source code of SUSE Linux Enterprise products.
Legal Notices
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