There are a variety of resources available from SUSE and from SUSE partners that can help you deliver your products more efficiently and cost effectively. Some resources provide insights or guidance prior to working with the technologies. Some are cookbooks to help you perform tasks or prototype new products. Some help you advance your technology or make it more compelling. Some provide interactive assistance to answer your questions. We recognize that different partners have different needs. The list below highlights a number of resources to get you started with SUSE.





Basic Technical Information and Tooling

Basic technical information on SUSE Linux characteristics like resource requirements, file system recommendations, etc. is listed in our server information page. This information allows you to plan interactions with the system to greatest benefit for the supported releases. The new modular structure in SLES 12 has been designed to address partner needs for both enterprise stability and provide up to date tools at the same time.

Basic SUSE user documentation can help you understand what to expect when using SUSE Enterprise Linux or other SUSE products. It can help you see what SUSE customers expect for installation and packaging as they put new products into their SUSE Linux environments.

The Software Development Kit is a basic toolset on any system.

If you are looking for SUSE product images, check out our SUSE public cloud service providers for options that can be very cost-effective and can help you get started right away.

Moving to SUSE Linux Enterprise from other platforms

Many products moving to SUSE Linux Enterprise are coming from UNIX environments. SUSE and our partners provide strategic information, planning help, programs and other materials to help you anticipate how you can best make this move.

Part of understanding a new environment is knowing what support is available and how long customers will use it. SUSE product lifecycle information will help you plan your product availability and support offerings.

Part of your transition to a SUSE environment can involve the virtualization choices available on SUSE Linux Enterprise. With virtualization as well as with other technologies, SUSE sees choice as a key component of our partnership offering. Docker and LXC containerization are also key choices in the marketplace now.

Upgrading to new SUSE Linux Versions or Service Packs

SUSE Enterprise Release notes that highlight new features and changes from a previous release or version are available for all currently supported SUSE Versions and service packs.

Specific SUSE documentation explains the typical update process for service packs and upgrades from one version to another.

When you look at supporting additional SUSE releases or environments, SUSE provides a compatibility statement that gives you assurance for your application operation across service packs and describes the compatibility with cloud environments. It also discusses the high level compatibility you can expect for updating to a new SUSE version.

Staying up to date

The SUSE community blog has a lot of current information on interesting topics!

Don't forget to keep your customers protected. SUSE keeps a list of security fixes that you will want to be aware of.

If you want an in-depth trial of the next SUSE Linux product release before it is available to your customers, please apply on the beta page during product beta. If you need only a short test period with the final software, SUSE Release Candidates are available to all our partners as a Partner Portal benefit.

Get a fast start and manage patches with the SUSE Subscription Management Tool

Exploring Strategic Product Development

Check out SUSE Studio™—It can help you do rapid prototyping with quick testing turnaround using a graphical interface, as well as quick repackaging of an existing solution from virtual images to cloud images with minimal delay. You can test alternative business models with real solution scenarios. You can share your images in the Studio Gallery to work with other partners.

If you are interested in exploring benefits of High Availability, the SUSE Linux HA extension provides a set of incremental capabilities that can be matched to solution requirements. Without a large investment up front, you can get started and then grow your HA use up to full-fledged automatic fail-over for your application.

In addition, we launched the SUSE Cloud Program which allows ISVs and developers to use SUSE Linux Enterprise hosted with the leading cloud service providers. With these providers, an ISV application that has been certified for a SUSE Linux Enterprise product is also automatically certified for cloud deployment

Getting specific answers or advice

SUSE Forums are organized according to major products and have interesting sub-forums around specific hardware architectures. These are great places to get information and to exchange ideas with other partners and developers. Several of the forums additional lists of resources too.

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
  • Extensions
  • SLE Software Development Kit (SDK)
  • Etc.