SUSE Update Infrastructure Changes for Microsoft Azure

SUSE has made it easier and faster for Azure users to keep their Linux workloads up-to-date. In conjunction with the recent release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 images in Microsoft Azure, SUSE enabled a new update infrastructure in the Microsoft Azure cloud. Both SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 and the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 images released on November 6, 2014 are setup to take advantage of this new infrastructure. The new infrastructure will provide a better service to users of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server images in Microsoft Azure as the repositories are now local to each region. Previously the repository access was always remote except for instances running in the US West region. Having the new infrastructure in place allows users to retrieve updates faster.

For those running instances created from SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 images released prior to November 6, 2014 a simple upgrade process is available to switch the running instance to utilize the new infrastructure for updates. Follow the steps below to switch your running instance:

-> wget http://104.45.147.201/instanceInfraUpgrade.noarch.rpm

Then as root

# zypper –non-interactive in instanceInfraUpgrade.noarch.rpm

# instanceInfraUpgrade

# rm instanceInfraUpgrade.noarch.rpm

This process is also documented on the SUSE forums,

https://forums.suse.com/showthread.php?5622-New-Update-Infrastructure

All users should update their instances launched from SUSE Linux Enterprise Server images with a release date prior to November 6, 2014 according to the procedure above. The old update server will be maintained until June 30, 2015 to provide ample time for users to update the infrastructure registration in their running instances. But why wait to update or for your updates? Do it today.

== Update July 29, 2015 ==

For those that did not follow the update process prior to June 30th, when the old infrastructure was removed following the given process above will result in failure. The reason for this failure is that a repository pointing to the old update server still exists and zypper will try to refresh data from the server. As the server has been decommissioned and is no longer reachable. The key is to stop zypper from trying to refresh the existing repositories. Thus, replace the zypper command above with the following:

# zypper –no-refresh –non-interactive in instanceInfraUpgrade.noarch.rpm