SUSE Manager 4.3 Public Beta is out!

We are happy to announce our Public Beta for SUSE Manager 4.3!

It’s been a year since the last SUSE Manager Public Beta, so it is time for a new beta program! Those of you that are part of the Uyuni community, which is our open source upstream project, might have already seen our continuous code improvement landing on the Uyuni Github project but now is the time to see and test them with SUSE Manager.

Important notice

Beta Registration Codes

SLES 15 SP4 Public Beta is required as base OS, you will need to use the Online Installation Media (and not the Full Installation) or our Minimal-VM images (formely known as JeOS) for your virtual environment, you can retreive them from the link below.

Registration is not working with your regular SUSE Manager key, special Beta Registration Code is required! You need to request one via email to beta-programs@suse.com

Please remember that SUSE Manager 4.3 Server and Proxy are Base Products, meaning you need only one beta registration code for the Server or the Proxy, that are to be used at the Unified Installer provided by the SLE15SP4 media. You don’t need a separate beta registration code for SLES 15 SP4.

Notable Changes

We did a lot of improvements all over the place, so to not overload this announcement, please find below a summary of the notable changes, however please refer to the SUSE Manager Beta page for the complete and more detailed lists.

• Base System Upgrade
  SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP4, which is still currently in development but in the Release Candidate phase. More information about SLES 15 SP4 Public Beta page
• Salt 3004
  Upgraded to upstream version 3004, plus a number of patches, backports and enhancements by SUSE, for the SUSE Manager Server, Proxy and Client Tools.
• PostgreSQL 14
  Updated from PostgreSQL 13 to PostgreSQL 14, which brings a number of performance and reliability improvements.
• Reporting Database
  Provides SUSE Manager data used for reports in a simplified schema, and is accessible by any reporting tool with support for SQL databases as content sources. This new database database is isolated from the one used for the SUSE Manager Server, and created automatically.
• Improved image management
  For more details about these end points, please refer to SUSE Manager API.
  • Kiwi images
    • Uses name and version from Kiwi config file, revision is increased on each build
    • Built image files are referenced in the database and deleted with the image entry
    • Image pillars are stored in the database
    • The build log is visible in the User Interface
  • Docker images
    • Use a new database entry for each revision
    • Old revision can be shown with the “Show obsolete” checkbox
    • Updated XML RPC API to manipulate with images, image files and pillars
• Debian 11
  SUSE Manager 4.3 is now able to manage Debian 11 “bullseye” clients as salt or salt-ssh minions.
• Salt SSH now uses the Salt Bundle
• New XML-RPC API version 26
• smdba: changed defaults for newer PostgreSQL versions
• Monitoring
  • Grafana 8.3.5
    From version 7.5.12 to 8.3.5.
  • Prometheus 2.32.1
    From version 2.27.1 to 2.32.1.
• HSTS Available
  HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) is a policy mechanism that helps to protect websites against man-in-the-middle attacks such as protocol downgrade attacks and cookie hijacking. The Public Beta comes with HSTS enabled by default, but we intend to disable it by default for the final version. Please check the known issue section below.
• Migration from 4.1 and 4.2 to 4.3
  It is now possible to migrate from 4.1 and 4.2 to 4.3. The user should upgrade SUSE Manager Server and its related products i-e SUSE Manager Proxy and Retail Branch Server as product is not meant to be run in a mixed-version scenario. When upgrading, upgrade SUSE Manager Server first before upgrading SUSE Manager Proxy or Retail Branch Server. There is a known issue when migrating to 4.3, please consult the Known Issues section for more detail.

Dropped Features

• SUSE CaaSP support
  The currently released versions of CaaSP will soon be going EOL and this naturally implies that we should also remove all the bits related to it from SUSE Manager.
• Deprecated features
  Traditional stack has been deprecated. The release that follows SUSE Manager 4.3 will not support traditional clients and traditional proxies, and is planned for 2023. We encourage all new deployments to use Salt clients and Salt proxies exclusively, and to migrate existing traditional clients and proxies to Salt.
• Unsupported products
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Expanded Support 6
  • Oracle Linux 6
  • CentOS 6
  • CentOS 8
  • Ubuntu 16.04
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
• Deprecated products
  • Debian 9 (after EOL 2022-06-30)

Technology Preview

• Containerized SUSE Manager Proxy and Retail Branch Server
  It will be possible to run the SUSE Manager Proxy and Retail branch server also in containers. This could be very helpful in scenarios where adding new virtual machines is not feasible for some reason. Additionally, the ability to run SUSE Manager Proxy and Retail branch servers in containers make it more flexible to run them anywhere without worrying about the underlying OS, while also making it possible to get the advantage of Kubernetes offerings like HA.
• JSON over HTTP API
  In addition to the current XML-RPC API, a new JSON over HTTP API will also be provided to make SUSE Manager API even easier to consume.

More information

Please visit https://www.suse.com/betaprogram/manager-beta for more information like beta schedule, how to report issues, how to start a discussion with SUSE Manager Engineering and more.