Release Notes #

If you are upgrading from a previous SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications release, you should review at least the following sections:

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 SP6 has been submitted to the certification bodies for:

For more information about certification, see https://www.suse.com/security/certificates.html.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is backed by award-winning support from SUSE, an established technology leader with a proven history of delivering enterprise-quality support services.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications includes Extended Service Pack Overlay Support (ESPOS). This provides an additional 3 years of support for each SP following the end of general support. Combined with the standard 6 months overlay, it offers a total of 3.5 years of overlay support after the launch of the next Service Pack.

For more information, check our Support Policy page https://www.suse.com/support/policy.html or the Long Term Service Pack Support Page https://www.suse.com/support/programs/long-term-service-pack-support.html.

To receive support, you need an appropriate subscription with SUSE. For more information, see https://www.suse.com/support/programs/subscriptions/?id=SUSE_Linux_Enterprise_Server_for_SAP_Applications.

The following definitions apply:

For contracted customers and partners, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is delivered with L3 support for all packages, except for the following:

SUSE only supports the usage of original packages. That is, packages that are unchanged and not recompiled.

Technology previews are packages, stacks or features delivered by SUSE which are not supported. They may be functionally incomplete, unstable or in other ways not suitable for production use. They are included for your convenience and give you a chance to test new technologies within an enterprise environment.

Whether a technology preview becomes a fully supported technology later depends on customer and market feedback. Technology previews can be dropped at any time and SUSE does not commit to providing a supported version of such technologies in the future.

Give your SUSE representative feedback about technology previews, including your experience and use case.

The SLE 15 SP6 product line is made up of modules that contain software packages. Each module has a defined scope. Modules differ in their life cycles and update timelines.

The modules available within the product line based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP6 at the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 SP6 are listed in the Modules and Extensions Quick Start at https://documentation.suse.com/sles/15-SP3/html/SLES-all/article-modules.html.

Not all SLE modules are available with a subscription for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 SP6 itself (see the column Available for).

For information about the availability of individual packages within modules, see https://scc.suse.com/packages.

Extensions add extra functionality to the system and require their own registration key, usually at additional cost. Most extensions have their own release notes documents that are available from https://www.suse.com/releasenotes.

The following extensions are available for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 SP6:

The following extension is not covered by SUSE support agreements, available at no additional cost, and without an extra registration key:

This sections lists derived and related products. Usually, these products have their own release notes documents that are available from https://www.suse.com/releasenotes.

The package sap-convergent-resource-agents ships resource agent (RA) for making the SAP Convergent Mediation (CM) ControlZone (by Digital Route) highly available. The RA uses CM’s mzsh as interface. See man page ocd_suse_SAPCMControlZone(7) for details.

This package is supported only in the context of SAP RISE.

The log level of the deprecation warnings regarding killmode=None have been reduced. Instead of warning, they are now logged at the debug log level.

SUSE is committed to helping provide better insights into the consumption of SUSE subscriptions regardless of where they are running or how they are managed; physical or virtual, on-premises or in the cloud, connected to SCC or Repository Mirroring Tool (RMT), or managed by SUSE Manager. To help you identify or filter out systems in SCC that are no longer running or decommissioned, SUSEConnect now features a daily “ping”, which updates system information automatically.

For more details see the documentation at https://documentation.suse.com/subscription/suseconnect/single-html/SLE-suseconnect-visibility/.

SAPHanaSR-angi is "SAP HANA SR - Advanced Next Generation Interface" for SUSE high availabilty clusters to manage SAP HANA databases with system replication. Goal of SAPHanaSR-angi is consolidating and finally replacing the SAPHanaSR and SAPHanaSR-ScaleOut packages. Nevertheless, CIB attributes are not backward compatible between SAPHanaSR-angi and SAPHanaSR or SAPHanaSR-ScaleOut. Upgrading from SAPHanaSR or SAPHanaSR-ScaleOut requires a certain procedure, see man page SAPHanaSR_upgrade_to_angi(7) for details. New deployments should be done with SAPHanaSR-angi, see man page SAPHanaSR-angi(7) for further information.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 supports Intel Optane DC persistent memory. This enables SAP workloads, such as SAP HANA to benefit from persistent memory This shortens start times of the system and provides better system stability.

From a file system perspective, the XFS file system is supported for persistent memory, with SAP HANA running in DAX mode. Make sure to also check the SAP instructions for using persistent memory with SAP HANA. SUSE is working closely with SAP on future developments.

If there are pmem namespaces, these need to be destroyed before the installation. To mount persistent memory directly on boot, the respective entries need to be added to /etc/fstab, for example:

/dev/pmem0    /mnt/pmem0    xfs    dax    0  0
/dev/pmem1    /mnt/pmem1    xfs    dax    0  0

Namespaces need to be created individually. Execute the following command for each namespace you want to create:

ndctl create-namespace --mode=fsdax --map=dev

Because the systemd and udev default timeout may be too short for large memory setups to become usable, your system may run into a timeout and the boot process may stop with an emergency shell. To prevent this from happening, increase the timeout to 1200 seconds. Create the file /etc/systemd/system/systemd-udev-settle.service.d/00-override.conf with the following content:

[Service]
TimeoutSec=1200s
ExecStart=/usr/bin/udevadm settle -t 300

Important

In an earlier version of this document, we recommended mounting persistent memory with the nofail option in /etc/fstab. This frequently required a manual mount of pmem devices on reboot. To automatically mount pmem file systems after reboot, we strongly recommend removing the nofail option and modifying the timeout value as described above.