SAP solutions are at the heart of business operations across the globe. In fact, 99 out of the 100 largest companies in the world are SAP customers – not to mention thousands of SMEs. SAP offers businesses a simplified way of connecting multiple parts of its operations, improving data processing and the flow of information. SAP HANA delivers business processes and analytics in real-time. But what is the secret to delivering SAP deployments with the security and reliability that customers need and expect? And how do you ensure they are getting value for money?

The answer all lies in choosing the right IT infrastructure. SUSE is one of the most trusted open-source platforms to run SAP solutions. At SUSE we have been partners with HPE, the leading SAP HANA hardware provider for more than 25 years. Together our achievements have been exemplary, from jointly delivering secure Linux, to container management and other market-leading solutions. Now, as companies strive for Digital Transformation with SAP HANA, HPE and SUSE are delivering the leading hardware and software infrastructure to guarantee that customers can maximize the value of their SAP deployments.

Why SUSE and HPE

The long-standing collaboration and joint projects between HPE and SUSE, provides reassurance to customers. HPE’s market-leading hybrid cloud platform, HPE GreenLake, has SUSE at its core – including every HPE GreenLake solution for SAP HANA. It also extends the benefits of consumption-based, pay-as-you-go pricing to SUSE customers. As a provider of SAP RISE, HPE has ensured that SUSE is part of the reference architecture of RISE with SAP. Even HPE Serviceguard for Linux, that protects applications and services from planned and unplanned downtime, runs on SUSE.

SUSE and SAP Makes Sense

SUSE is not only integral to HPE, it’s also a foundation stone for SAP’s own internal and external systems. With over two decades of partnership and co-development between SUSE and SAP, it’s no surprise that SUSE is part of SAP’s reference development platform. It’s reassuring to know that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is an SAP Endorsed App with advanced features to deploy, configure, and manage SAP systems. As a result, systems administrators can work more efficiently and run the full SAP system stack confidently on-premises and in the cloud.

SUSE & HPE Maximize the Value of SAP Deployments

Our customers can achieve ZERO downtime on their SAP deployments by choosing to run their IT infrastructure on HPE and SUSE. This reliability ensures customers can deploy, configure, and protect the full SAP system stack quickly, reliably, and confidently on-premises and in the cloud and maximize the initial cost of their investment. For many customers, our secure platform already provides a solid foundation to embark on or continue with innovation or digital transformation projects. And for those who are yet to move to a HPE and SUSE infrastructure, we can’t wait to help you get there.

Cost Savings, High Availability and Security

To find out more about how you can realise the promise of your SAP deployments with high security, reliability, and cost savings visit: https://www.suse.com/partners/alliance/hpe/

As innovation takes off at the Edge, one aspect we’re all trying to avoid is complexity. There is simply no room at the Edge for complexity— or much else for that matter. Simple, fast, robust, small yet powerful and dynamic is the name of the game. These demands are high. Enter ‘cloud native’ tech with its lack of assumptions, microservices architectures, container-based applications and dynamic orchestration of compute, storage, and networking resources and it’s quickly becoming apparent how fit for purpose cloud native is for the Edge.

The team of engineers at Synadia, a SUSE One partner, in conjunction with Community Maintainers, develop and maintain the open source NATS project, part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. The NATS communications system is used for all kinds of interesting implementations but we’ve invited Synadia to share two compelling Edge use cases from the energy sector demonstrating the power of cloud native solutions at the Edge. ~Bret

SUSE guest blog authored by:
Brian Flannery, VP Global Sales, Synadia

As workloads increasingly run at the edge, there is a massive paradigm shift underway to allow location dependent and independent applications to run on any device – securely and efficiently.

Complexity is not something developers want to introduce into edge architectures.  Moreover, edge workloads need to be able to instantly work with cloud, hybrid, and on-premises applicationswithout any re-architecting.  This is where K3s and NATS work superbly together.

NATS is an extremely lightweight, performant, and secure (Zero Trust design) messaging utility. The two together offer edge device and application orchestration (K3s) and communication and data ingestion (NATS), solving two critical design requirements for any developer.

Two interesting, recent real-world examples come from the Energy industry.

How Duke Energy uses K3s and NATS at the Edge

Duke Energy and its Emerging Technology Office (ETO) are committed to innovation in renewable energy resources, energy storage, distributed intelligent grid architectures, machine to machine interoperability through standards like OpenFMB, and best practice Zero Trust cybersecurity. Consequently, ETO has built a proof-of-concept system named ZTAG, “Zero Trust Applications for the Grid”.

ZTAG represents a multi-year effort to develop a best-in-class architecture for the Distribution Grid. The system has now been deployed at the ETO Mount Holly Microgrid using OpenFMB. Each OpenFMB node is a field device with compute resources like an industrial PC or gateway. The system provisions and deploys nodes, updates node applications, and automates key renewal through distributed PKI. The architecture leverages Docker for application containerization, Kubernetes for container management, SPIFFE/SPIRE with Trusted Platform Module (TPM) identity management for workload attestation, and NATS for secure publish and subscribe communications. The system is scalable and secure from the data center to field devices. The goal is for all field devices to adopt node attributes.

SUSE’s K3s is a critical component in the ZTAG architecture. Multiple distributed OpenFMB nodes form logical clusters that work in small groups to implement distributed intelligent (DI) applications at the electric grid edge. These small “edge” clusters are grouped together in a hierarchy of clusters to perform higher level grid functionality. K3s enables quick, secure workload/application updates providing an environment for the development of secure DI applications.

The ZTAG team also works closely with Synadia’s team, as NATS is also a key component of ZTAG. NATS provides low-latency, multi-path, asymmetric, and event driven data flows from device-to-device, device-to-application, and application-to-application throughout the ZTAG architecture. NATS also provides distributed security allowing actors to only communicate with other authorized actors. These features enable the electric grid to no longer be bound by only north-south data flows from devices in the field to so-called “head end” systems in the back office. This new east-west, peer-to-peer messaging architecture enabled by NATS is foundational for distributed applications in the future electric grid.

How PowerFlex uses K3s, Rancher, and NATS at the Edge

PowerFlex is a leading national provider of intelligent onsite energy solutions that support carbon-free electrification and transportation. As a single full-service provider, PowerFlex customizes clean technology solutions to help clients achieve their energy and sustainability goals. Through the comprehensive PowerFlex X platform, PowerFlex leverages patented smart software to control, monitor, and optimize a client’s distributed energy resources to reduce cost and maximize return on investment.  

SUSE’s K3s  is a critical part of how PowerFlex builds and manages highly distributed bare-metal systems on the edge. When PowerFlex added Rancher to the mix, it provided an extra layer of observability while keeping hardware and software secure. PowerFlex developers can hit the ground running with K3S on hardware or in VMs, and they value the access that Rancher gives them to pre-production environments. The PowerFlex Sight Reliability Engineering team has confidence in their ability to address issues in production thanks to the rapid and secure access Rancher provides.

Ted Lee, Principal Software Engineer at PowerFlex, and Robbie Hughes, Full Stack Software Developer on the PowerFlex Cloud X team, are replacing legacy REST services with an event-based architecture with NATS at the center. Ted said, “I’m excited that NATS provides a secure connection between our cloud and edge services where messages are just there.” Robbie echoes his excitement and adds that “the leaf node topology is amazing because it allows our sites to operate independently even when networks go offline.”

Interested in getting started at the Edge with NATS? Contact info@synadia.com

Additional resources on using K3s and NATS:

• 1 minute demo of installing NATS on K3s
• SUSECON 2022 session: Running a Distributed K3s Control Plane at the Edge with NATS JetStream [TUT-1217]

Brian is VP Global Sales at Synadia, and has experience scaling the business at multiple technology companies during the blast-off phase of growth. Prior to Synadia he was the CRO for a Salesforce development services partner, and also spent time at Open Source Software providers such as Eucalyptus and rPath prior to their acquisitions.

Introduction:

SUSECON 2022 is here.  SUSECON is SUSE’s annual technical conference where customers, partners, and community enthusiasts come together to discover open-source solutions, products, and technologies that can address their Linux, Kubernetes, and edge computing needs.

For those of us focused on the technology side of SUSE’s business, SUSECON serves as a checkpoint where we can look back and recognize what SUSE has achieved in collaboration with its partners.  This year, SUSE is privileged to have its major Silicon Design partners participating in the conference.

SUSECON’s theme this year is Future Forward.  Enabling future SUSE products and solutions for our customers relies in no small part on the integration of new hardware capabilities and key software components (from drivers to applications) in SUSE’s product ecosystem.  From CPU optimizations to Confidential Computing, or simplifying and securing GPU usage, SUSE and our Silicon partners work together to make these technology improvements available to our joint customers via the SUSE product stack.

While we partner with our Silicon Design partners across a variety of products, technologies, and solutions, this article will focus on those embracing an open approach that our customers can then use when building their own technology stacks.

Intel:

Intel and SUSE have been working together since SUSE’s inception in 1992 when SUSE was the first company to market Linux for the enterprise.  As Intel’s and SUSE’s products and technologies portfolios have grown throughout the years, so have the breadth and depth of the relationship.

Intel’s portfolio and SUSE collaboration:

Figure 1. The Intel/SUSE Technology ‘tree of life’

It is often stated in the industry that you can’t put a computing solution together without one or more Intel components inside.   

A few months ago, we put together the ‘tree of life’ (above) to explain the role of Silicon Designers in general and Intel in particular.  Like the roots of a tree, Intel’s breadth of portfolio is often unseen.  Yet its enablement and usage via the SUSE product portfolio is fundamental to the development of larger products and solutions built by our joint partners and available through the many routes to market (IHVs, ISVs, CSPs and Embedded Solutions).

With over 15,000 software engineers, Intel plays a significant software leadership role.  For example, Intel is one of the leading contributors to the Linux kernel as well as a significant contributor in the Kubernetes space.

SUSE’s engagement with Intel goes across our three major engineering business units (Business Critical Linux, Enterprise Container Management, and Edge Computing).  Get a glimpse of some of our joint activities through the following sessions:

As you can observe, the Intel and SUSE partnership results in a richer ecosystem for joint customers and partners alike.

AMD:

AMD and SUSE have been collaborating in the upstream Linux community and around AMD-specific optimizations for more than 20 years.  AMD gave the world the first CPU to introduce the x86_64 ISA, and SUSE was an early provider of an enterprise Linux distribution for the then new architecture.

Our most recent collaboration efforts are around two key areas: GCC Compiler and Toolchain optimizations for AMD and Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV and SEV-ES).  Given the future forward and security focus of SUSECON, we’ll discuss Secure Encrypted Virtualization.

Secure Encrypted Virtualization Defined:

For many years, data has been protected while at rest (ex: encrypted storage) or in transit across the network (e.g., https data transmission).  However, in memory data protection has been the ‘missing link’ to provide an end-to-end Confidential Computing solution.  With today’s “standard” virtualization, the memory of each virtual machine is visible to the host.  Data processed in guest virtual machines could be compromised by a malicious attack from the host.

AMD’s Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) is a technology that protects KVM-based Linux virtual machines by transparently encrypting the memory of each VM with a unique key.  SEV is especially relevant to cloud computing environments, where VMs are hosted on remote servers which are not under the control of the VM owners.

AMD’s Secure Encrypted Virtualization – Encrypted State (SEV-ES) provides additional security above memory encryption.  The Guest register state is encrypted with a guest encryption key and its integrity protected (only the guest can modify its register state).

AMD and SUSE. Bringing SEV and SEV-ES to life:

SUSE has been playing an important role with AMD since 2016 to bring Confidential Computing ‘upstream’ with collaborations in the areas of the Linux kernel, libvirt and KubeVirt to name a few.  SUSE customers will be the first ones to benefit from AMD SEV-ES host and guest modes, enabling customers to select additional security-strengthening VM isolation.

Where can I learn more and see it in action?

Easy: Attend Jörg Rödel’s session titled “Confidential Computing with SUSE and AMD SEV-ES” (TUT-1210).

NVIDIA:

NVIDIA is a long-standing SUSE partner around accelerated computing.  As NVIDIA expanded its business into data center-scale networking, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and edge computing, and SUSE expanded its reach into the cloud-native space so th breadth and depth of our collaboration has also grown.

NVIDIA is optimizing accelerated compute across GPUs, CPUs, DPUs, complete systems and specialized software,  and SUSE aims to enable its availability and usage to our joint customers through our operating system offering (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for Arm, SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Base Container Images) as well as our cloud-native product stack (SUSE Rancher, and RKE2/K3s Kubernetes engines).

As mentioned in the introduction, this article centers around open products, technologies, or solutions with our key Silicon Design partners.  When it comes to NVIDIA, everyone agrees that their biggest open announcement this year is the release of NVIDIA Open-Source GPU Kernel modules.

The availability of these modules is a big deal for SUSE and its customers. The ability for Linux distribution providers like SUSE to add the driver directly to its kernel is significant because this could not be accomplished before due to license incompatibility. It also enables SUSE to perform security reviews of the drivers and sign the drivers.  Last, but certainly not least: it allows for SUSE engineers to debug, integrate, and contribute back.

Availability via SUSE Linux Enterprise

To paraphrase our General Manager of the Business-Critical Linux unit, Markus Noga: “We are excited that NVIDIA is releasing its kernel-mode driver as open source.  SUSE is proud to be the first major Linux distribution to deliver this breakthrough with SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP4 in June”.

The Future:

NVIDIA and SUSE continue to collaborate in other open-source areas, particularly in the cloud-native space.  Stay tuned for future announcements as new solutions become available.

Arm Ecosystem:

Arm is a leading semiconductor intellectual property (IP) supplier.  It develops technology it licenses to other companies who design and manufacture their own products that implement the Arm architecture.  This includes system on a chip (SoC) as well as system on module (SOM) designs.  It also designs IP cores that implement the Arm instruction set architecture and licenses these designs to many companies that incorporate the designs into their own products.

Because of its approach to the market, the collaboration is better defined as SUSE and the Arm ecosystem.

SUSE’s Business-Critical Linux unit provides SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for Arm, SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro, as well as SUSE Linux Enterprise Base Container Images for Arm’s 64-bit Armv8-A architecture, enabling Arm ecosystem and partners to build products and solutions with a world-class, enterprise supported Linux distribution.  SUSE Linux Enterprise can be deployed today on Silicon from Broadcom (Raspberry Pi), Ampere Computing (Gigabyte Mount Snow), as well as cloud-based instances from AWS (Graviton) with Azure Virtual Machines availability coming soon.

SUSE Rancher’s K3s is available for AArch64 and can be managed via Rancher Management. It provides a robust, opinionated Kubernetes distribution that can be deployed on devices as small as Raspberry Pis or as large as 128 cores on Ampere Computing’s Altra devices or in the cloud.

The partnership between Arm and SUSE is about providing partners and customers with open-source based infrastructure products and solutions for the Arm architecture.

Learn More:

Attend:

• Philippe Robin’s session: “Building Arm Neoverse Cloud to Edge Infrastructure with SUSE” (SPO-1325)
• Jeffery Tu (Ampere Computing) and Bryan Gartner’s (SUSE) session: “Video-On-Demand Consumption from Workloads on Kubernetes Edge Services” (TUT-1302).

Summary:

The ongoing collaboration between SUSE and the Silicon Designers enables joint downstream partners to build enterprise-class solutions, leveraging Silicon-based features and capabilities, through an open-source OS and Cloud-native set of tools.    These foundational building blocks are available through partners (IHVs, ISVs, and CSPs to name a few) who in turn are delivering the solutions our joint customers need to run their business.

Call to Action:

• Register for SUSECON 2022 if you haven’t done so already (https://susecon.com). It’s 100% online and free.
• Choose from over 100 sessions to attend by experts on Linux, Kubernetes management, and edge solutions.
• Taste a sample of the ongoing collaboration between SUSE and key Silicon Designers.

SUSE GUEST BLOG ARTICLE AUTHORED BY: Alex Thilen, Head of Business Development, Kubecost

Introducing OpenCost — An Open Source Project for Monitoring Kubernetes Spend

We are excited to share the launch of OpenCost, an open source project that provides real-time cost monitoring for teams running Kubernetes workloads.  

As container and Kubernetes adoption continues to grow, navigating the complexities around measuring and allocating cost is becoming a business-critical challenge. A recent CNCF survey showed overspend is increasingly a problem for teams scaling their Kubernetes deployments, and more than 70% of organizations do not have accurate cost monitoring in place. 

Born out of the Kubecost project, OpenCost introduces a new community-driven specification and accompanying implementation to solve this monitoring challenge in any Kubernetes environment above 1.12. OpenCost was developed by a group of contributing partners, including Adobe, Armory, AWS, D2iQ, Google, Kubecost, Mindcurv, New Relic, and SUSE. We feel it’s important that this project is not driven by any single entity—and that it continues to evolve and thrive within the broader Kubernetes ecosystem. Founding members of the OpenCost community are leading contributors and adopters of Kubernetes, interested in developing optimized Kubernetes experiences for their users and customers.

The contributors to the OpenCost specification have heard from our respective customers, partners, and internal teams that standardization is a pressing need for effective cost management practices across cloud platforms, Kubernetes distributions, and teams.

Our vision for OpenCost

OpenCost seeks to develop a common standard — enabling teams using Kubernetes to operate with a single model for measuring and managing cost across all of their environments. Specifically intended for DevOps and engineering teams, OpenCost provides visibility into the black box that is Kubernetes spend. 

The contributing partners collectively decided to submit the project for review as a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Sandbox project because as a neutral home for cloud-native projects, we believe the CNCF is the best organization to help achieve our goals of standardizing Kubernetes cost monitoring. We are currently in the sandbox project queue, and we’re excited to continue iterating on our project based on feedback from the CNCF community. We will share updates on our progress as they develop.

Using OpenCost, you can benefit from greater visibility into current and historical Kubernetes spend and resource allocation and experience cost transparency in Kubernetes environments that support multiple applications, teams, departments and more. OpenCost aims to be  platform-agnostic across all clouds, on-premises infrastructure, and air-gapped environments, and includes functionalities for: 

• Real-time cost allocation by Kubernetes service, deployment, namespace, label, statefulset, daemonset, job, pod, container, and more.
• Allocation of in-cluster resources such as CPU, GPU, memory, load balancers, and persistent volumes.
• Dynamic infrastructure pricing enabled by integrations with cloud providers and on-premises pricing and/or billing APIs.
• Easy integration with Prometheus.

Try it yourself

Check out OpenCost on GitHub to get started in less than 3 minutes.

Let us know what you think! We love feedback and contributions, and our supportive community is here for any questions in Slack.

Alex Thilen is the Head of Business Development for Kubecost.  He is a former Category Lead at AWS, where he led the Containers & Kubernetes Category for AWS Marketplace. He lives in Seattle.

It’s well known that investing in training helps accelerate business modernization goals and minimizes downtime and disruption. But with all the demands of keeping everything up and running, how do you find time to take training and keep your skills up to date? With the SUSE eLearning Gold Level Annual Subscription, you don’t have to choose, you can do it all.

With the convenience of being able to train all year long, SUSE’s new Gold Level subscription provides access to powerful hands-on labs and helps you obtain industry-recognized SUSE Certifications.

The subscription includes over 130 hours of technical training content covering SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, SUSE Manager and SUSE Rancher. With an annual subscription, you’ll also stay up to date with the latest product releases from SUSE.

Kenny Stewart, SUSE’s vice president of Global Services, said, “With the skills gap in open source at an all-time high, we’re focused on helping organizations upskill their employees with an exceptional training experience. Our new eLearning Gold Level subscription provides incomparable choice, convenience and flexibility to our customers.”

Other subscription highlights include:

Five Certification Exam Vouchers

With the new Gold Level subscription, you receive five certification exam vouchers. This means you won’t have to worry about procuring exam vouchers or paying for them out of your own pocket. And you’ll have flexibility to certify up or across SUSE technologies, along with extra “insurance” in case you need to take an exam more than once. Training content in the eLearning library is excellent preparation for SUSE Certified Administrator (SCA), SUSE Certified Administrator Plus (SCA+), SUSE Certified Deployment Specialist (SCDS) and SUSE Certified Engineer (SCE) certifications, across all technologies.

200 Hours of Live Technical Labs

SUSE’s Gold Level subscription includes 200 hours of access to labs. Live Technical Labs are a remote-learning environment where you can get hands-on practice – doing rather than watching. Our lab environment will also have “auto-suspend,” which means if you need to take a break, the lab environment will save your work for up to five days. You can pick up right where you left off in the lab the next time you connect.  In addition, the labs have easy browser access, so no client is required, allowing you to connect from almost any device.

The 200 hours of access is completely flexible – you decide how you want to use it. You can use the hours on several courses or repeat an individual lab exercise as many times as you need to.

SUSE partner Dan O’Brien, president of Fast Lane, U.S. and Canada, said, “People learn by doing, so having access to live technical labs as part of an eLearning subscription helps accelerate both knowledge and retention for learners. As a Global Authorized Training Partner, we are excited to offer SUSE’s eLearning Gold Level subscription to our customers.”

Ask The Expert

As the Expert service is included in SUSE’s Gold Level subscription. If you need to ask a clarifying question on a video you just watched, or if you are stuck on a lab step and need some help troubleshooting, you simply send an email and one of our expert certified instructors will respond with the help you need.

With the amazing benefits and features of the new SUSE eLearning Gold Level subscription offering, yes, you can do it all.

Learn More:

Full details on the Gold Level subscription can be found at https://www.suse.com/training/elearning

Hey you, yes you there, step right up! I can spot a Sci-Fi fan a mile away! Was “Back to the Future” one of your favorite movies growing up? If so, then you are in for a real treat!

SUSECON is launching in just a week, and this year the theme is Time Travel! It is going to showcase inspiration from EPIC films like Back to the Future, Terminator, Dr. Who, Men in Black! Basically as a nod to SUSE’s 30^th anniversary, you, Mr. SUSECON attendee will travel through time and experience a wealth of content from the Dawn of Linux to the Age of Possibility (passing through the Rise of Kubernetes and the Edge Renaissance), it will be a fun and engaging experience, immersing you in Time Travel, Linux, Kubernetes and any resulting shenanigans! So sign up today if you haven’t already!

As the AWS ambassador at SUSE, it would be remiss of me to not put in an explicit plug for all the awesome AWS sessions you’ll want to attend at this event. So here they are:

• Migrating SAP Workloads to SUSE on AWS – An Overview
• Deploy a SUSE HANA Scale-up Cluster using AWS Launch Wizard for SAP 
• Migrating SUSE Workloads to AWS with AWS Application Migration Service
• The Business Value of “Being Green”: SUSE on AWS Graviton lowers energy costs and carbon footprints!
• Protecting workloads on AWS with SLE HA – A Deep Dive
• Demystifying SUSE Cost Optimization on AWS

So step into your DeLorean, hold on tight until we hit 88 miles per hour, cuz where we are going, we don’t need no roads, 😛

“SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension gives us the robust failover and replication tools we need to maintain business continuity and maximize uptime for vital SAP S4/HANA systems. At the same time, the open source nature of the SUSE technologies helps keep our options open for the future.” Miguel Antunes, IT Coordinator, CENIBRA.

Brazil-based CENIBRA is a key producer of raw material for paper products. As booming demand put aging systems and processes under increased pressure, CENIBRA decided to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA, running on IBM Power Systems servers with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for SAP Applications.

For years, the company had relied on SAP ERP applications to support everything from finance and accounting to logistics. With the infrastructure underlying this SAP ERP instance nearing its end of life, CENIBRA decided that the time was right to refresh its IT landscape.

Enlisting the help of local systems integrator, PC Place, CENIBRA decided to migrate core business applications to SAP S/4HANA, running on SLES for SAP Applications. SLES for SAP Applications was chosen due to its strong interoperability with IBM and SAP solutions. In addition, SAP and SUSE provide integrated technical support for their software, meaning a reduced time to resolve any issues with SAP S/4HANA on SLES, compared to other operating systems

Maintaining high availability for key systems

To keep key processes running smoothly around the clock, CENIBRA implemented SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) High Availability Extension, a bundled component with SLES for SAP Applications. The extension provides high availability clustering technologies that are easy to set up and can be deployed in both physical and virtual environments.

As SAP is a mission-critical platform for CENIBRA any unplanned disruption or downtime has significant impact on operations. SLE High Availability Extension provides the robust failover and replication tools required to maintain business continuity and maximize uptime for vital SAP S4/HANA systems, whilst the open source nature of the SUSE technologies helps keep CENIBRA’s options open for the future.

With SAP S/4HANA running on IBM Power Systems servers and SLES for SAP Applications, CENIBRA has a modern, fully supported IT stack that it can count on to keep operations running smoothly from end to end.

CENIBRA can now generate reports in a much faster and more standardized way across multiple business entities. This enables the company to always have trusted, up-to-date information at hand to drive sound business decisions.

Meanwhile, with SLES for SAP Applications, CENIBRA enjoys consistently high application performance and has improved the resiliency of its mission-critical SAP systems.

CENIBRA made use of saptune, a tool specific to SLES for SAP Applications that optimizes the operating system to take full advantage of IBM Power architecture, to help maximize the value of its investment in the new platform.

The SUSE operating system has also delivered a noticeable improvement in administrative efficiency; the intuitive user interface and easy-to-navigate configuration tools help simplify and streamline management.

Thanks to the solid foundation of SLES for SAP Applications, IBM Power and SAP S/4HANA, CENIBRA is ready for the next phase of its technology evolution, migrating to the cloud, meaning it can take full advantage of the innovative technologies that will help the business run better.

Click here to find out more about how SUSE and CENIBRA have elevated availability, resilience and efficiency, preparing themselves for future innovation and growth.

Staying current with today’s technology innovations is the best way to prepare for your businesses future success. To that end, SUSECON Digital 2022 is providing a future forward look at our industry and technology trends, bringing together our diverse set of partners and technologies to help businesses prepare for their future success.

The need for rapid innovation has never been greater. To become more agile and accelerate innovation, organizations are embarking on journeys of digital transformation. These transformations require modernizing legacy infrastructure and applications, adopting cloud native technologies, and pushing organizational boundaries beyond the data center and cloud, all the way to the edge.

We are excited to share that Microsoft will be a Cornerstone sponsor and that Hiren Shah (Microsoft, Head of Products – SAP on Azure Platform) and Markus Noga (SUSE, General Manager -Linux Product and Marketing) will participate in a keynote discussion to help us provide our customer’s guidance on where the industry is headed with open-source technologies, in cloud native, edge and infrastructure.

In addition to the keynote with Hiren and Markus, Microsoft will have 10 sessions at SUSECON Digital 2022 this year:

GitOps with Microsoft Azure Arc and SUSE Rancher [BP-1314]

The choice to move to cloud solutions (especially PaaS solutions) enables the organization to modernize its applications and move to microservices architecture. This new concept forces the organization to manage complex environments and…

Dolev Mizrahi, Development & DevOps Engineer, Aztek

Learn how to reduce downtime for SAP workloads on Azure with SLES for SAP Applications [BP-1265]

Customers rely on mission-critical SAP systems like SAP S/4HANA to run their business. But what happens when these systems are down? It doesn’t matter whether the outage is planned or unplanned, any outage impacts productivity, revenue, and…

Ralitza Deltcheva , PRINCIPAL PROGRAM MANAGER, Microsoft

Sherry Yu, Director, SAP Success Architect, SUSE

Accelerate SAP Migrations to Azure using SAP Deployment Automation Framework [SPO-1318]

Migrating mission critical SAP workloads can be complex for enterprises. Customers are relying on automation to minimize downtime and lower risk when migrating SAP workloads to Azure. We developed our opensource SAP Deployment Automation Framework…

Morgan Deegan, Sr Program Manager – SAP Automation, Microsoft

Will Bratton, Product Management Lead for SAP , Microsoft

AHB, aka Azure Hybrid Benefit and what it can do for you on your journey to the cloud. [SPO-1322]

AHB aka Azure Hybrid Benefit is an exclusive Azure offering which provides flexibility to customers to either migrate their SUSE licenses to cloud or choose pay as you go software subscriptions on Azure for any SLES VM on Azure without downtime…

Mayank Thapliyal, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft

Automotive Software Development : Shaping the 3rd Automotive Software Development with Open Source [SPO-1313]

Many OEMs and Tier 1s aspire to become software companies. In this session we will present our approach on this transition and how it could be accelerated. We will use the SDV open eco system to approach and highlight how we can bring modern…

Heiko Huettel, Senior Director and Head of Automotive, Mobility, and Transport EMA, Microsoft

Introduction to the Azure HPC Software Platform [SPO-1315]

Software and tooling are at the heart of a differentiated HPC AI experience, including in-house and open source offerings as well as solutions from partners such as SUSE. Come hear the latest about our software platform, what we’re building for…

Rob Futrick, Principal PM Lead, Azure HPC Software + Services , Microsoft

Innovation without Disruption: The new Linux [KEY1003]

Join Markus Noga, GM Linux for a lively discussion around “innovation without disruption” with a tour of the new Linux and beyond. Markus will be joined by representatives from Electronic Partner, Dell, Microsoft Azure, Google, AMD, and NVIDIA –…

Markus Noga, SUSE

Deploying SQL Server with SUSE Rancher [TUT-1308]

Want to understand how you can easily deploy Microsoft SQL Server using a Linux Container from SUSE Rancher? This session will walk you though the process of deploying SQL Server via the Rancher Marketplace using a Helm Chart. We will take a in…

Dwain Sims, Sales Engineer, SUSE

SQL Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server – VMs, Kubernetes, SUSE Rancher and more!! [BP-1064]

In this session we will focus on how you can get started with SQL Server on SLES 15 in Azure. When we talk about deployments, we will focus on the performance best practices for SQL Server SLES based Azure VMs. Authentication for SQL Servers is…

Amit Khandelwal, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft

James Yang, Cloud Solutions Architect, SUSE

How To Optimize Cloud Costs and Increase Resiliency for Stateful Applications With SUSE Rancher [BP-1270]

Kubernetes has been the platform of choice to develop modern applications over the last few years. In addition, it is very common for enterprises to leverage public cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure to deploy a managed…

Nicolas Vermande, Principal Developer Advocate, Ondat

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One of the best things about Kubernetes is just how absurdly flexible it is.

You, as an admin, can shape what gets deployed into what is the best for your business. Whether this is a basic webapp with just a deployment, service and ingress; or if you need all sorts of features with sidecars and network policies wrapping the serverless service-mesh platform of the day. The power is there.

This has long been one of the weaknesses of the PaaS style approach since you tend to be locked into what the platform builder’s opinions are at the time.

With some of the features in recent releases of Epinio, we’ve found a middle ground!

You can now give your developers both the ease of use, short learning curve and speed that they want while also getting the ability to shape what applications should look like in your environments!

This takes the shape of two features: custom Application Template(s), and a Service Marketplace. Let’s dive into what these are and how to use them.

Application Templates in Epinio

The way a deployment works with Epinio is that the developer pushes their code to the platform where it’s cached in an object store, built using buildpacks, pushed to a registry, generates a values.yaml, then deployed using helm to the local cluster.

In past releases, all of this was configurable except the deployment itself. You could use your own object storage, buildpacks and registry but were locked into a basic application that was just a deployment, service and ingress.

We’ve introduced a new custom resource in Epinio that allows for a platform admin to set up a list of application templates that can be selected by the application developer for their application!

With this feature, you could offer a few different styles of applications to your developers to choose from while still keeping the developer’s life easier as well as allowing for governance of what gets deployed. For example, you could have a secure chart, a chart with an open-telemetry sidecar, a chart that deploys Akri configurations, a chart that deploys to Knative or whatever you can dream of!

So how do I set up an application template in Epinio?

Good question, I’m glad you asked

The first thing you need is a helm chart! (Feel free to copy from our default template found here: https://github.com/epinio/helm-charts/blob/main/chart/application)

Since Epinio generates the values.yaml during the push, your chart will be deployed with values that look similar to:

epinio:
  tlsIssuer: epinio-ca
  appName: placeholder
  replicaCount: 1
  stageID: 999
  imageURL: myregistry.local/apps/epinio-app
  username: user
  routes:
  - domain: epinio-app.local
    id: epinio-app.local
    path: /
  env:
  - name: env-name
    value: env-value
  configurations:
  - config-name
  start: null

Note: The ability for developers to pass in additional values is being added soon: https://github.com/epinio/epinio/issues/1252

Once you have all your customizations done, build it into a tgz file using helm package and host it somewhere accessible from the cluster (potentially in the cluster itself using Epinio?).

With the chart published, you can now expose it to your developers by adding this CRD to the namespace that Epinio is installed in (“epinio” if you followed the docs):

apiVersion: application.epinio.io/v1
kind: AppChart
metadata:
  name: my-custom-chart
  namespace: epinio
spec:
  description: Epinio chart with everything I need
  helmChart: https://example.com/file.tgz
  shortDescription: Custom Application Template with Epinio

With this done, the developer can view what templates can be used using:

epinio app chart list

Then when they push their code, they can pick the chart they want with:

epinio push --name myapp --app-chart my-custom-chart

Service Marketplace in Epinio

The other huge piece of the puzzle is the service marketplace functionality. We went around in circles for a bit on what services to enable or which set of operators to support. Instead, we decided that Helm was a good way to give choice.

Similar to the Application Templates, the Service Marketplace offerings are controlled via CRDs in the epinio namespace so you can easily add your own.

By default, we include charts for Redis, Postgres, MySQL and RabbitMQ for use in developer environments.

To add a helm chart into the marketplace, create a new Epinio Service object that looks like:

apiVersion: application.epinio.io/v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: my-new-service
  namespace: epinio
spec:
  appVersion: 0.0.1
  chart: custom-service
  chartVersion: 0.0.1
  description: |
    This is a custom chart to demo services.
  helmRepo:
    name: custom-chart
    url: https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
  name: custom-chart
  shortDescription: A custom service 
  values: |-
    exampleValue: {}

Since we are using helm, you can put any Kubernetes object in the marketplace. This is super helpful as it means that we can seamlessly tie into other operator-based solutions (such as Crossplane or KubeDB but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader).

We are working toward a 1.0.0 release that includes a better onboarding flow, improved security, bringing the UI to parity with the CLI and improving documentation of common workflows. You can track our progress in the milestone: https://github.com/epinio/epinio/milestone/6

Give Epinio a try at https://epinio.io/