Backfitting SLES 12 for IBM z15 – It’s in Our DNA

For 20 years, SUSE has partnered with IBM to advance Linux on Z.  From the early days of the IBM Linux Tech Center to an elaborate open source ecosystem, you might say that supporting IBM Z is part of our DNA.

Several months ago, SUSE included support for the newly announced IBM z15 and IBM LinuxONE III systems as part of SLES 15.  Now, with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for IBM Z and LinuxONE 12 SP5, we are backfitting all the latest IBM Z support for pervasive encryption and more.

The latest IBM z15 system is designed to support your mission-critical initiatives and allow you to be innovative as you design and scale your environment.  Combined with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for IBM Z and LinuxONE, these state-of-the-art systems provide an ultra-secure data serving platform to support the global economic growth we are seeing today.

In a nutshell, here are the new features in SLES for IBM Z and LinuxONE 12 SP5:

• Allows a seamless IBM Z/LinuxONE server hardware upgrade experience for existing Z/LinuxONE customers.
• Enables detection of IBM z15/LinuxONE III, allowing the new interfaces to expose the hardware details.  This is essential for middleware and other components to use and exploit IBM z15/LinuxONE III features.
• Exploits the on-chip data compression, in turn providing unmatched performance.
• Allows use of crypto resources in docker containers in a multi-tenant environment (i.e., each container can only access the adapters and domains assigned to the container).
• Improves security management of KVM guests, allowing for swap space encryption with protected keys and usage monitoring of CryptoExpress resources.

For all the historians out there, here is a fun timeline of SUSE’s partnership with IBM:

Whether you are new to the world of IBM Z or an existing SUSE and IBM Z customer, there’s a lot of great work being done here at SUSE for the IBM z15 and IBM LinuxONE III, including security, cloud enablement, Kubernetes and resiliency that enable you to build with flexibility, deliver with confidence and protect the future.

The combination of SUSE Linux Enterprise, IBM Z and LinuxONE delivers a highly secure, transaction-intensive, scalable and resilient data serving platform for business-critical workloads – and will continue to deliver innovative technology together to galvanize today’s infrastructure.  These future-proof features provide peace of mind that your business and your customers’ data is protected.

To learn more, visit ibm.com/z15 , ibm.com/linuxone and suse.com/products/systemz .

Thanks for reading!

Jeff Reser  @JeffReser