The release of the SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 16 distributions has long come and gone and the development cycle for SLE 16.1 is well on the way and will culminate in the SLE 16.1 release later this year. As such, and as part of the “better late than never” story of time, I am finally […]

Long Term Service Pack Support (LTSS) is an add-on product for SUSE Linux Enterprise distributions that affords the extension of support for Service Packs (SPs) for up to 3 years. Until now getting an add-on product such as LTSS and applying it to Pay As You Go (PAYG) instances was only possible with some business […]

Well, starting a new feature announcement with an apology and instructions to work around a bug is not the way this was planned. But as the saying goes in German Erstens kommt es anders und zweitens als man denkt. Loosely translated into: Murphy’s law strikes again. With this out of the way let’s start at […]

In 2019 AWS EC2 introduced the Instance Metadata Service v2 (IMDSv2) protocol to enhance security when accessing the metadata for an instance in EC2. Since then a lot of effort has been made to move everything that depends on IMDS to use the v2 protocol. The AMI creation process also has a setting to make […]

Let me start by stating that the following is limited to the Public Cloud SDK packages, i.e. packages that provide code used to access the APIs for Alibaba, AWS, Azure, and Google cloud, no other Python packages are affected by this change. Also the timing of when you apply these changes is under your control, […]

A while back AWS introduced UEFI support for specific instance types. Then in March of 2023 AWS enabled hybrid-boot for AMIs and in addition to the memory encryption that has already been supported in EC2, AWS announced the support of attestation, also known as SEV-SNP recently. Throughout this process AWS and SUSE have been working […]

The time has arrived to get out of, what is probably one of the longest, “soft launch” periods, and make the availability of SLE-Micro images in the Public Cloud more widely known. I am taking the liberty of defining “soft launch” in this case as publish images don’t talk about the images let users discover […]

A while back in cooperation with the Azure team we enabled Azure Hybrid Benefit for SUSE Linux Enterprise images. In the first incarnation it was possible to switch a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server For SAP Applications instance from PAYG (on-demand) to BYOS (Bring Your Own Subscription). Such a switch helps […]

Way back when in 2015 I wrote about differences between BYOS and on-demand images in “On Demand, BYOS, say what? Why do I need it?” mentioning that on-demand images contain “special sauce” that register an on-demand instance automatically to the SUSE operated update infrastructure in AWS EC2, Azure, and GCE. Much has changed since then, and […]

During Microsoft Ignite 2020 the support of Azure Hybrid Benefit for SUSE Pay As You Go was announced.  This is the result of a combined effort that includes changes in the Azure IMDS (Instance Metadata Service) and the SUSE region based update infrastructure that supports PAYG instances. Let’s get into the details about what that means and […]

Starting earlier this month (August 2020) Live Patching is now included with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server For SAP Applications (SLES For SAP) on-demand offerings in Amazon Web Services EC2, Google Compute Engine, and Microsoft Azure for 12 SP3 and later instances and images. What is live patching? Live patching allows you to patch a running kernel […]

In Step 2 Toward Enhanced Update Infrastructure Access the time-line for enabling access to the SUSE update infrastructure in the Public Cloud via routing through the data center was announced. As of June 1, 2020 we have started the work necessary to make this possible for all regions in AWS, Azure, and GCE. This marks the beginning […]

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of announcing a major upgrade to our update infrastructure that serves updates to on-demand instances in AWS, Azure, and GCP. In the blog I promised that we would be enabling network traffic routing that allows you to send data from your instances in the Public Cloud through your data […]

Our update infrastructure that provides updates for on-demand instances has been running with more or less no changes for more than 5 years and has shown great reliability over this period of time. Over time new requirements have arisen and some bugs have been worked around due to some fundamental limitations of the implementation. The […]

Well, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 has been released for a while and SLES 15 SP1 is on the horizon. While there will be another service pack in the SLES 12 series, SLES 12 SP5, many people have expressed interest to move to SLES 15 from SLES 12. After providing a “Follow this long tedious […]

Updated Sep-26-2024: Life cycle changes for PAYG due to simplified LTSS support Updated Oct-30-2019:  Added new section addressing instances It has been a while since we published the original image life-cycle guidelines SUSE Image Life Cycle for Public Cloud Deployments. Much has been learned since, technology has progressed, and the life-cycle of products has changed. […]

Update 2024-09-26 If you are interested in LTSS for PAYG instances a new streamlined process for LTSS has been implemented, see Long Term Service Pack Support for PAYG Instances Simplified. For other add-on products the outlined process below continues to apply. End Update 2024-09-26 SUSE offers a number of services and products around SUSE Linux […]

Ever tried to switch instance types from lets say t2 to m5 on SLES 12 SP3 (including SLES For SAP)? Well if you did you were in for a bad surprise in that your instance would no longer boot. Switching the instance type back away from the newer instance types c5, m5, m5d…. and restarting […]

The release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 is out and with it, it brings a new kernel build, kernel-azure. The new kernel is built into our on-demand images in Azure. The -azure build of the kernel is fully supported by SUSE. For instances started from the -Standard, or -Priority images you need to contact Microsoft […]

When I wrote this it was Janurary 9, 2018 which was supposed to be the day of a major earthquake in the computing world. However, due to various circumstances this all happened on January 3rd, 2018 at 2 PM PST and the aftershocks as well as the queasy feelings that come along with such an […]

Drum-roll please, announcing SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP1 and SP2 For SAP Applications  available as on demand in Azure. Hurrah 🙂 .We’ve had Bring Your Own Subscription (BYOS) images available for some time and now you can also enjoy the benefits of SLES For SAP in an on demand format. For those looking for fencing […]

A while back we introduced utilities to help with image management in AWS EC2. Especially uploading a custom image is not necessarily something you’d do in a minute on the spur of the moment and thus the ec2uploadimg can come in handy. Some people agree and have picked up the tool only to find that a […]

Starting Friday March 25, 2016 Azure will enter a 2 day rolling maintenance period that might effect the availability of updates, i.e. “zypper up” may fail, for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 and 11 (and all service packs) on demand running instances and may effect the automatic registration of newly launched on demand instances to the […]

What is the complete name of the current image of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 in Google Compute Engine? When was the last SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 image in Microsoft Azure deprecated? What IP addresses does an on demand SUSE Linux enterprise Server instance running in the ap-southeast-1 region in AWS EC2 access […]

One of the messages that has been persistently echoed since the emergence of public cloud frameworks has been the “pay as you go” phrase, or “pay based on your use”. This on demand computing model also brings with it some other expectations. I refer to them as “fire up and use”. Customers expect that the […]