Version 1.2
Release notes for SUSE Manager Server 1.2 |
About SUSE Manager |
System Requirements |
Installation and Setup |
Activation of SUSE Manager |
About the Client Tools Channel |
grubby vs. perl-bootloader |
Red Hat Channels |
Providing feedback to our products |
Documentation and other information |
Legal Notices |
Colophon |
This Novell product includes materials licensed to Novell under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL requires that Novell makes available certain source code that corresponds to the GPL-licensed material. The source code is available for download at http://www.novell.com/linux/source/.
Also, for up to three years from Novell's distribution of the Novell product, upon request Novell will mail a copy of the source code. Requests should be sent by e-mail to sle_source_request@novell.com or as otherwise instructed at http://www.novell.com/linux/source/.
Novell may charge a fee to recover its reasonable costs of distribution.
You have more than just a few Linux servers to manage, maybe even a mixed environment of RHEL and SLES?
Then SUSE Manager is the answer.
SUSE Manager gives you best of breed Linux lifecycle management based on the most mature codebase for any Linux management tool, with both RHEL and SLES support from one unified console, maintained and improved by the guys who wrote the fastest and most advanced Linux update stack on the planet.
SUSE Manager gives you the lowest possible Total Cost of Ownership for your Linux environment, from bare metal provisioning to daily patch management.
SUSE Manager is an open source (GPLv2) Linux systems management solution that allows you to:
•.Inventory your systems (hardware and software information)
•.Install and update software on your systems
•.Collect and distribute your custom software packages into manageable groups
•.Provision (AutoYaST / Kickstart) your systems
•.Manage and deploy configuration files to your systems
•.Monitor your systems
•.Provision and start/stop/configure virtual guests
•.Distribute content across multiple geographical sites in an efficient manner.
SUSE Manager Server is a 64bit Java application with an Oracle database backend. This requires sufficient CPU power and main memory. A multi-core 64bit CPU (x86_64) is required, accompanied with 4 to 8 GB of main memory.
The SUSE Manager Server database contains every information required to manage clients. This includes all installable packages and updates as well as lists of installed packages for every client. This data requires a lot of storage space on the harddisk, typically 50 GB or more per package repository.
See the Quick Start guide for more details on the system requirements.
SUSE Manager Server is distributed as an appliance which bundles an operating system (SLES 11 SP1 x86_64) with the SUSE Manager Server application and a database.
There are two versions of the appliance, one virtual XEN image and one installable ISO. The ISO can be deployed on physical hardware or fully virtualized (e.g. KVM, VMware).
Bundled with the SUSE Manager Server appliance comes an Oracle 10g Express Edition database. This is an entry-level, small-footprint database, limited to up to 4GB of user data. It can use up to 1GB of memory and one CPU on the host machine.
This database is suitable for small and testing deployments of up to approx. 20 clients only.
Novell provides the database as is. Please contact Oracle for support programs.
For production use an external Oracle 10g or 11g database is highly recommended. A license for an external database is not included with SUSE Manager Server.
Installation is done in two major steps. The first installs the appliance and configures the underlying SLES 11 SP1 operating system. The second configures SUSE Manager Server and populates the Oracle database with initial data.
It is also possible to migrate data from an existing Red Hat Satellite Server 5.3 or 5.4.
See the QuickStart manual for step-by-step instructions for installing and configuring SUSE Manager Server.
With the purchase of SUSE Manager Server you will get an activation code. This code needs to be entered at the registration step during installation.
This code enables your SUSE Manager Server to retrieve updates from the Novell Customer Center. Regularly installing updates is a mandatory step to keep your SUSE Manager Server stable and secure. Before applying some updates the SUSE Manager services needs to be stopped and only restarted after the update has been applied. See the SUSE Manager Installation Guide for details.
SUSE Manager currently doesn't technically limit the number of deployed servers in most cases, except for a theoretical limit of 200,000 entitlements/subscriptions. Please note that this is a technical limitation and does not indicate in any way that you can deploy more servers than you have valid subscriptions for!
Later releases of SUSE Manager Server will keep track of allowed and used entitlements for managed systems.
The Client Tools Channel contains client-side packages to enable specific functionality. Please refer to the Client Configuration Guide about which packages relate to which function. Some packages have a very specific use case and installing them blindly is discouraged.
The package 'grubby' from the SLES 11 SP1 Client Tools channel is required for re-provisioning only. Installation of 'grubby' on a SLES 11 SP1 system outside the re-provisioning use-case will conflict with 'perl-bootloader' and might lead to failure on kernel updates.
Managing Red Hat clients requires availability of appropriate Red Hat packages. These are not available through the Novell Customer Center (NCC) but must be provided by other means, e.g. from a retired Red Hat Satellite installation.
In case of encountering a bug please report it through your support contact.
http://www.novell.com/documentation/ contains additional or updated documentation for SUSE Manager Server 1.2.
These Release Notes are available online at http://www.novell.com/linux/releasenotes
Visit http://www.novell.com/linux for the latest Linux product news from Novell and http://www.novell.com/linux/source/ for additional information on the source code of SUSE Linux Enterprise products.
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Thank you for using SUSE Manager Server in your business.
Your SUSE Manager Server Team.