Release Notes #

In SLES for SAP 11, updates related to Extended Service Pack Overlay Support (ESPOS) were shipped from special repositories.

In SLES for SAP 12 SP3 and later, updates related to ESPOS are shipped directly from the Update repositories. This means, there is no separate ESPOS repository to set up.

Support requires an appropriate subscription from SUSE. For more information, see https://www.suse.com/products/sles-for-sap.

General Support Statement

The following definitions apply:

SUSE will only support the usage of original (unchanged or not recompiled) packages.

Previously, the cryptctl server would hand out an encryption key to all computers that requested one using a valid disk UUID. The client computer's identity was not further verified.

In the version of cryptctl shipped with SLES for SAP 12 SP3, servers can optionally also verify the identity of client computers via TLS certificates for all communications that take place between them.

KMIP (Key Management Interoperability Protocol) is an industrial standard protocol for managing cryptographic keys. In the latest cryptctl, KMIP version 1.3 is supported so that cryptctl can store and manage disk encryption keys on a KMIP-compatible key management appliance.

Be aware that the decision to use a key management appliance for key storage must be made during the initial server setup. There is no migration path between storing keys on a key management appliance versus on a server's hard drive.

SLES for SAP 12 SP3 now uses the value SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP3 as its PRETTY_NAME in /etc/os-release.This change improves general compatibility with application checking for a standard SLES installation only.

However, if you are using a tool that identifies operating systems by their NAME, PRETTY_NAME, or ID value, make sure to adapt to the change. For example, the configuration management tool Ansible uses PRETTY_NAME to check for the OS.

The SAP NetWeaver integration has been improved to match the growing usability of cluster solutions especially during SAP maintenance procedures. This includes the visibility of the cluster solution in the SAP Management Console (SAP MC) and support for SAP kernel updates.

sap_suse_cluster_connector has been updated to API version 3 to support the newest features and calls from sapstartsrv. This includes transparent support for SAP rolling kernel switches (RKS) for central services instances and replication instances.

The documentation for clamsap has been added to the package and a new chapter in the online documentation has been added.

The RPM software pattern for SAP Business One has been adjusted to include packages required by version 9.3.

SAP HANA allows installing multiple database containers (MDC) within a single SAP HANA installation. Now the SAP Installation Wizard allows for such an installation as well.

Further clean up steps have been added to clone-master-clean-up.sh, such as MachineId and UUIDs within /etc/fstab, etc.

This entry has appeared in a previous release notes document.

The SAP Installation Wizard now follows SAP's recommendation for partitioning and creates the following setup:

An important and regularly occurring maintenance task for SAP HANA clusters is upgrading the SAP HANA database. If installing the initial cluster is already critical, upgrading is even more so, as you now need to care about data integrity and system availability.

The yast2-hana-update module provides a YaST workflow that will guide you step-by-step on the process of upgrading your SAP HANA in a SUSE cluster setup. The entire process is based on the so-called Near Zero Downtime Upgrade process described in the official SAP HANA documentation. The wizard handles the part of the procedure related to the SUSE cluster, leaving only some steps related to be performed manually by the SAP HANA administrator.

The packages sapconf and saptune have been extended to cover system tuning for SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise and SAP Business Objects.

Certain workloads require a large virtual address space for a single process

The virtual address space limit has been increased from 64 TB to 512 TB on the POWER architecture. To maintain compatibility with older software and hardware, processes are limited to 128 TB virtual address space unless they explicitly map memory above 128 TB.

This functionality is supported starting with kernel 4.4.103. We always recommend using the latest kernel update to get fixes for any issues found over the product lifetime.