Release Notes #

SLES for SAP 15 SP1 introduces many innovative changes compared to SLES for SAP 15 GA. The most important changes are listed below:

If you are upgrading from a previous SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications release, you should review at least the following sections:

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications also includes the software selection of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension.

Make sure to review the release notes for both products in addition to this document:

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is backed by award-winning support from SUSE, an established technology leader with a proven history of delivering enterprise-quality support services.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 has a 13-year life cycle, with 10 years of General Support and 3 years of Extended Support. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications comes Extended Service Pack Overlay Support by default, this means the current version (SP1) will be fully maintained and supported until 3.5 years after the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 SP2.

If you need additional time to design, validate and test your upgrade plans, Long Term Service Pack Support (LTSS) can extend the support you get by an additional 12 to 36 months in 12-month increments, providing a total of 3 to 5 years of support on any given Service Pack.

For more information, see:

To receive support, you need an appropriate subscription with SUSE. For more information, see https://www.suse.com/support/programs/subscriptions/?id=SUSE_Linux_Enterprise_Server_for_SAP_Applications.

The following definitions apply:

For contracted customers and partners, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 SP1 is delivered with L3 support for all packages, except for the following:

SUSE will only support the usage of original packages. That is, packages that are unchanged and not recompiled.

Technology previews are packages, stacks, or features delivered by SUSE which are not supported. They may be functionally incomplete, unstable or in other ways not suitable for production use. They are included for your convenience and give you a chance to test new technologies within an enterprise environment.

Whether a technology preview becomes a fully supported technology later depends on customer and market feedback. Technology previews can be dropped at any time and SUSE does not commit to providing a supported version of such technologies in the future.

Give your SUSE representative feedback about technology previews, including your experience and use case.

On SLES for SAP 15 SP1 for POWER, the minimum certified revision of SAP HANA 2.0 SPS04 is revision 41. For earlier revisions of SAP HANA 2.0 SPS04, there is a compatibility issue.

However, this issue does not affect other versions of SAP HANA, such as version SAP HANA 2.0 SPS03, which is supported.

In the past for Linux the systemV init service sapinit was starting the SAP Host Agent and all the sapstartsrv processes listed in /usr/sap/sapservices. A real systemd integration was not available.

Now the native integration of SAP Host Agent is started via the saphostagent.service unit. Adaptations to the saphostagent.service unit must be done by adding a so-called drop-in file.

For any native integrated SAP instance a systemd unit with name schema <SID>_<INO> (for example, SAPEN1_10) is added. Adaptations should be done using a drop-in file. It is highly recommended to still use the sapcontrol functions which guarantees also the functionality of cluster integration like the sap-suse-cluster-connector.

Before you start your new installation or update to the native systemd integration, make sure you update the resource agent packages to the newest available versions. The native SAP systemd integration is supported starting with the following package versions for SLES for SAP Applications 15:

For details please refer to the manual pages ocf_suse_SAPStartSrv(7), SAPHanaSR(7), and SAPHanaSR-ScaleOut(7).

SAP applications depend on the sapinit System V script. Other third-party software not yet updated to include systemd unit scripts may also depend on System V init scripts. On its own, systemd does not support System V init scripts anymore.

The package insserv-compat adds compatibility with System V init scripts to systemd and can be used both SAP and non-SAP applications. This package is now also included in the SAP Applications Server Base pattern.

That way, insserv-compat will provide System V compatibility until SAP and other third parties fully adopt systemd unit scripts.