3 Reasons to Migrate to SUSE Manager 4.3

You’re running SUSE Manager 4.1 and you are perfectly content.  After all, you’ve got support for your multi distro environment, the ability to patch your systems automatically using Salt or Ansible and can access the amazing SUSE follow-the-sun, local language, technical support.  So why migrate to the latest release?

This blog will provide you with the 3 most important reasons to migrate.  And why you should do it now.

 1. The End is Near

SUSE Manager 4.1 will NO LONGER be supported after October 31,2022.  Sure, you can still run it and it will work, but if you run into any problems, your staff will be left to solve them on their own time.  That means your valuable admins are going to be searching for answers when they could be doing higher-level tasks that are valuable to your business.

Additionally, with an unsupported management tool, you are opening your server to the rising threat of cyberattacks.  And, with the cost of cyberattacks rising 18% year over year (to the tune of 33.6M dollars annually), is that a risk you are willing for your business to take?

2.  New Features

Did you see the SUSE Manager announce blog?  Not only can SUSE Manager 4.3 manage more than 15 Linux distributions, including (soon) SLE Micro 5.3, Red Hat Enterprise Linux V9, Ubuntu 22.04 and the latest Rocky and Alma Linux.

SUSE Manager 4.3 also brings other exciting features to the table.  Here are a few:

Salt Bundle 

Prior to SUSE Manager 4.3, each installation of the salt minion client was dependent on the Python libraries included with that client OS. This sometimes required numerous packages and repositories to be added. With the Salt bundle provided in SUSE Manager 4.3 you now have a consolidated, single-client binary package that includes all the Python dependencies and everything the client needs to communicate with the SUSE Manager server. Read the blog here to learn more!

Containerized Proxy 

Wherever you are on the spectrum of transforming your business to take advantage of cloud native technologies, containers are certainly going to be part of your conversation.  After all, containers provide the agility you need to build transformative products and services quickly without compromising on security or reliability.

With the release of SUSE Manager 4.3, you have the option of deploying your proxies and/or Retail Branch Servers either as traditional infrastructure or as a set of containers.  Rearchitecting the Proxy and Retail Branch Server provide distinct benefits, two of those being the ability to:

• Deploy SUSE Manager in the most resource-constrained environment, such as edge deployments.
• Integrate SUSE Manager as part of your Cloud Native architecture – in essence, future-proofing your business.

Learn more on how to set up a Containerized Proxy here.

Centralized Reporting 

SUSE Manager 4.3 is not the first release that introduces the Hub Architecture, but it is the first to offer Hub Reporting.  That means for the first time, you have a single reporting database of all your servers.   Hub Reporting provides the ability to generate fully customizable reports simply by connecting any query tool that supports the SQL language.  The best part is:  You don’t need to be running in a Hub environment to take advantage of it.  The reporting database is available on the Hub or any SUSE Manager Server.

Learn more about Hub Reporting here.

3. No New Distributions

The end of support for SUSE Manager 4.1 means that you don’t get support for the latest Linux distributions.  If you are even thinking about moving to SLES V15SP5, RHEL 9, or Ubuntu 22.04, you will not get feature-rich patches or CVE fixes. Your distributions are literally frozen in time. You will have two choices:  Don’t upgrade to the latest versions of your enterprise OS or upgrade and have your admins spend their valuable time manually keeping your systems current, healthy, and secure.

So what are you waiting for?  You can directly migrate in place to SUSE Manager 4.3, without needing to re-register your clients.  Get all the new features and benefits with SUSE Manager 4.3, while future proofing your infrastructure.

The time is now, and SUSE is here to help.