SUSE Linux Enterprise 11's renewal plans

Novell has formally scheduled the upcoming Service Pack 1 for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for the end of the second quarter of the year. The service pack is currently available as a release candidate for partners and ISVs to test. No new features are being added at this time, but bugs and integration problems are being fixed.

With Service Pack 1, SLES 11 will be thoroughly revised, with many updates, including one to include the Linux kernel 2.6.32, which supports kernel-based mode setting (KMS). As product manager Matthias Eckermann explains in his blog, KMS support is essential for modern graphics hardware and drivers. Given the number of changes, SLES 11 SP1 is almost a new release.

Other important features in Service Pack 1 are kernel resource management and support for up to 4096 CPUs and 16TB of RAM in a system. Xen is updated to version 4.0 and Novell SLES SP1 also supports the alternative KVM virtualisation solution. The drivers which Microsoft released as open source for paravirtualised operation when running as a Hyper-V guest are included.

Support for RAID 6 and RAID 10 at installation time has been added. The WebYaST tool allows for the web based management of SLES installations and the new YaST module, the "Hardening and Security Center", shows all relevant security settings in one place.

The SLES11 High Availability extensions will be updated with HA Service Pack 1 which includes the current version of the OCFS2 clustered file system making it possible to run Samba in a SLES cluster. HA Service Pack 1 will also include DRBD version 8.3.7. A new feature is inclusion of the Disaster Recovery Framework, Relax and Recover (ReaR).

Other details of Novell's plans for service pack 1 can be found in the Brainshare 2010 presentation of the SLES roadmap by Novell's Director of Product Management, Gerald Pfeifer, and SUSE Linux Senior Product Manager Matthais Eckermann. (Schlomo Schapiro)

(Schlomo Schapiro / djwm)