Marketing description

Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for Lenovo ThinkServer products is an enterprise-grade Linux operating system offering provided by Lenovo and is certified to run on Lenovo ThinkServer products.
Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for Lenovo ThinkServer products are bundled offerings that include the operating system license and support in a single, easy to purchase offering. These offerings are designed to deliver an enterprise-grade, most-interoperable, open-source Linux server platform for business mission-critical applications.

Key selling points

• Full system rollback
• Extensions for clustering
• Security standards compliance
• Ready for SUSE linux enterprise live patching
• IPv6
• Flexible deployment options
• Full support for KIWI
• Linux containers
• Samba 4 with server-side copy improvements
• Interactive and unattended upgrades
• VMware tools integration

Product features

• Full system rollback
  The Full System Rollback feature gives you better resiliency by allowing you to take snapshots of the system, including the kernel files, and roll back. Because the bootloader is now integrated into the rollback process, system administrators can boot from a snapshot, enhancing fault recovery and change tracking and comparison, and improving data safety.
• Extensions for clustering
  Achieve higher service availability by clustering servers together and removing single points of failure. SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension offers an industry-leading, mature high availability solution. Further enhance your business continuity by connecting data centers across unlimited distances with Geo Clustering for SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension.
• Security standards compliance
  SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 is in evaluation for a Common Criteria Certification, and multiple security modules are in process for a FIPS 140-2 Validation with the NIST. Among those modules are OpenSSL, OpenSSH client and server, Strongswan (IPSec-based VPNs) and the Kernel Crypto API.
• Ready for SUSE linux enterprise live patching
  Improve your service availability by reducing planned downtime. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 includes infrastructure for a live kernel patching technology delivered through SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching. With it, you can update security patches without rebooting machines and without waiting for your next service window. As a result, it improves the availability of your mission-critical workloads and virtual hosts to increase business uptime.
• YaST
  Save time and effort in managing local systems with a tool that's easy-to-use and consistent in its user experience. In SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, the popular, user-friendly YaST gives you the capability to customize your system quickly during and after the installation. YaST is now written in Ruby so it's more open and easily customized.
• Installer
  SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 introduces installer that saves time with faster installation and fewer reboots in the workflow. Its Ruby scripts allow partners to embed SUSE Linux Enterprise Server into their solutions more smoothly.
• IPv6
  The next-generation Internet Protocol version 6 specification (IPv6), the successor to IPv4, can provide far more address space for device connection. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 natively supports IPv6, such as during installation. With IPv6 support, you can connect to next-generation network equipment.
• Flexible deployment options
  You can deploy SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 anywhere in physical, virtual and cloud environments. You can deploy it on different hardware architectures like Intel 64, IBM System z and IBM POWER. It is a "perfect guest" - optimized for various hypervisors like Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, Xen and KVM. You can also find it in 50-plus public clouds, including Microsoft, Google and Amazon.
• Full support for KIWI
  KIWI is a tool that helps you simplify your "golden image" creation process and is now included in the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 subscription. With one configuration, you can use KIWI to create OS images for physical deployments (DVD, USB) as well as provision it into virtual hypervisor environments (Xen, KVM, VMware, HyperV), container frameworks (Linux Containers, Docker) and public and private clouds. In fact, KIWI is the "engine" behind the well-known SUSE Studio. KIWI is used by the Advanced Systems Management machinery for image creation as well.
• Linux containers
  Since 2012 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has included commercial support for Linux Containers - for highly efficient, low-overhead OS virtualization. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 improves the manageability of Linux Containers with better integration into the common virtualization framework (libvirt). As a result, you can manage hypervisors (Xen, KVM) and Linux Containers using the same tools and integrate them into business processes equally. The libvirt interface also helps integrate Linux Containers into higher level frameworks, such as the OpenStack-based SUSE OpenStack Cloud.
• Docker (technology preview)
  Docker is an open source technology that automates the deployment of applications inside software containers. It provides an additional layer of abstraction and automation of OS-level virtualization on Linux. Docker and Linux Containers are great ways to build, deploy and manage applications. You can use them with tools like Open Build Services and KIWI for easy and powerful image building.
• Samba 4 with server-side copy improvements
  Samba allows you to easily and securely interoperate in the Microsoft Windows environment. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 includes support for the latest version of Samba 4, which provides better integration with Windows Active Directory Domains. When SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 is used as the file server in the Windows environment, you can leverage the copy-on-write btrfs file system to implement true "server-side copy" and improve copy performance for Windows users. You can also handle File Server Remote VSS Protocol (FSRVP) snapshot creation with btrfs and the Snapper tool.
• Interactive and unattended upgrades
  Using this feature, system administrators can quickly and easily upgrade their SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating systems, reducing downtime, lowering administrative costs and improving quality. In fact, SUSE Linux Enterprise supports (manual) major version upgrades for 10 years. With YaST, you can interactively prepare a suitable profile and then use AutoYaST to automatically upgrade groups of servers.
• VMware tools integration
  Save the time of downloading and installing VMware drivers and tools (open-vm-tools) separately. These tools are now fully supported and integrated into SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 in an all-in-one package with their performance fine-tuned. Updates use the same mechanism as the other packages in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.