SUSE announced the general availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise 12, the newest version of its reliable, scalable and secure platform for efficiently deploying and managing highly available enterprise-class IT services in physical, virtual or cloud infrastructure. New products based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 feature enhancements that more readily enable system uptime, improve operational efficiency and accelerate innovation. The foundation for all SUSE data center operating systems and extensions, SUSE Linux Enterprise meets the performance requirements of data centers with mixed IT environments, while reducing the risk of technological obsolescence and vendor lock-in.
With this release, SUSE also introduces an updated customer portal, SUSE Customer Center, to make it easier for customers to manage their subscriptions, access patches and updates, and communicate with SUSE customer support.
This vesion of SUSE Linux includes versatile server operating systems for delivering business-critical IT services in a variety of physical, virtual and cloud environments. New features like full system rollback, live kernel patching enablement and software modules increase data center uptime, improve operational efficiency and accelerate the adoption of open source innovation. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 further builds on SUSE’s leadership with Linux Containers technology and adds the Docker framework, which is now included as an integral part of the operating system.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server takes advantage of IBM POWER8 processor-based hardware optimizations that include support for little-endian Linux applications running on simultaneous multithreaded (SMT8) and PowerKVM environments. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z improves workload performance through instruction set exploitation for the last two generations of IBM System z processors, state-of-the art support for cryptographic accelerators and the related software stack, and enhancements for operational tasks like faster DASD formatting with dasdfmt or multiple point-to-point NETIUCV interfaces between Linux on System z and z/VM instances.
This version also cluster software for increasing services availability, physical and virtual, local and global. A new web console, updated OCFS2 and GFS2 file system support, and the latest updates in ReaR for disaster recovery make protecting core business systems quick and easy.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Virtual Machine Driver Pack boosts Windows virtual machine performance on Linux hosts. It now supports a wider variety of Windows operating systems, such as Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1.