                   Release notes for SUSE Manager 3.2 Server

                              Version 3.1.99~RC1
                            Wednesday May 23, 2018

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  * Version Revision History

  * Beta disclaimer
  * About SUSE Manager
      + Stay up-to-date
  * Major changes since SUSE Manager 3.2 Server Beta 3
      + Formula with Forms improvements
      + SSH minions and Action Chains
      + SLES 15 and Python 3
      + Known issues
  * Major changes since SUSE Manager 3.2 Server Beta 2
      + Salt 2018.3.0
      + Spacewalk 2.8
      + Support for SLE-15 clients
      + salt-ssh, ssh minions (and bootstrapping)
      + Salt action chains improvement
  * Major changes since SUSE Manager 3.2 Server Beta 1
      + Upgrade from SUSE Manager 3.1 Server
      + Support for SLE-15 clients
      + Salt action chains
  * Installation
      + Requirements
      + Registration code
      + Installing the SUSE Manager 3.2 Server extension on SLES 12 SP3
      + Update from previous versions of SUSE Manager Server
      + Migrating from RHN Satellite
  * Major changes since SUSE Manager Server 3.2 GA
      + Patches
  * Major changes since SUSE Manager 3.1 Server
      + SUSE Manager Proxy versions
      + Spacewalk 2.8
      + Salt
          o Salt update to 2018.3.0
      + Upstream changes since SUSE Manager 3.1
          o Spacewalk 2.7
  * Support
      + Supportconfig confidentiality disclaimer
      + Supportability of embedded software components
      + Red Hat Channels
      + Support for EOL'ed products
      + spacewalk-utils
  * Providing feedback to our products
  * Documentation and other information
  * Legal Notices
  * Colophon

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This SUSE product includes materials licensed to SUSE under the GNU General
Public License (GPL). The GPL requires that SUSE makes available certain source
code that corresponds to the GPL-licensed material. The source code is
available for download at http://www.suse.com/download-linux/source-code.html.

Also, for up to three years from SUSE's distribution of the SUSE product, upon
request SUSE will mail a copy of the source code. Requests should be sent by
e-mail to sle_source_request@suse.com or as otherwise instructed at http://
www.suse.com/download-linux/source-code.html. SUSE may charge a fee to recover
its reasonable costs of distribution.

Version Revision History

  * May 25th, 2018: RC1 release
  * May 5th, 2018: Beta3 release
  * April 5th, 2018: Beta2 release
  * March 8th, 2018: Beta1 release

Beta disclaimer

This is a BETA release and NOT intended for production usage.

About SUSE Manager

You have more than just a few Linux servers to manage, maybe even a mixed
environment of RHEL and SLES?

Then SUSE Manager is the answer.

SUSE Manager gives you best-in-class open source infrastructure management with
new enhancements focused on improving DevOps efficiency, with both RHEL and
SLES support from one unified console, maintained and improved by the guys who
wrote the fastest and most advanced Linux update stack on the planet.

SUSE Manager gives you the lowest possible Total Cost of Ownership for your
Linux environment, from bare metal provisioning to daily patch management. SUSE
Manager is an open source (GPLv2) Linux systems management solution that allows
you to:

  * Inventory your systems (hardware and software information)
  * Install and update software on your systems
  * Collect and distribute your custom software packages into manageable groups
  * Provision (AutoYaST / Kickstart) your systems
  * Easily manage configurations with Salt
  * Match subscriptions to products installed on your servers
  * Provision and start/stop/configure virtual guests
  * Distribute content across multiple geographical sites in an efficient
    manner
  * Find vulnerable systems by searching by CVE number
  * Track compliance of managed systems with OpenSCAP
  * Improve DevOps efficiency and optimize operations with a single tool to
    setup and manage your container infrastructure
  * Ensure container and cloud VM compliance to hardened profiles/templates
    across your DevOps environments based on your own internal security
    policies
  * Reduce complexity and regain control of your assets with improved
    visibility of your systems and infrastructure deployments

Stay up-to-date

You can stay up-to-date regarding information about SUSE Manager and SUSE
products:

  * Check the SUSE Manager Wiki
  * Read the SUSE Blog

Major changes since SUSE Manager 3.2 Server Beta 3

Bugs fixed.

Formula with Forms improvements

  * Formula data can now be managed with XMLRPC API.
  * New types so almost any kind of upstream formula can be handled by SUSE
    Manager.

SSH minions and Action Chains

Full support for SSH minions on Action Chain.

SLES 15 and Python 3

SLES 15 utilizes Python 3 as its default system version. Due to this change any
older bootstrap scripts (based on python 2) must be regenerated for SLES 15
systems.

Attempting to register SLES 15 systems with SUSE Manager using Python 2
versions of the bootstrap script will fail.

Known issues

Online help (bubbles) and interactive documentation does not work. Please use
the PDF documentation at the "Help" section (on the left menu). To be fixed on
GMC.

Major changes since SUSE Manager 3.2 Server Beta 2

Many bugs fixed.

Salt 2018.3.0

Salt has been upgraded to the final 2018.3.0 release.

Spacewalk 2.8

The upstream project released version 2.8 and SUSE Manager 3.2 Beta 3 is now
based on this release.

Support for SLE-15 clients

Support for SLE-15 clients is now complete. Note that you still need a SLE-15
beta registration code in order to access this product.

salt-ssh, ssh minions (and bootstrapping)

SUSE Manager now detects the client's Python version (Python 2.6 - SLE 11,
Python 2.7 - SLE 12, Python 3 - SLE 15) and adapts salt-ssh code accordingly.

Salt action chains improvement

Updating Salt via patch is now handled properly.

Major changes since SUSE Manager 3.2 Server Beta 1

Upgrade from SUSE Manager 3.1 Server

Upgrade from version 3.1 of SUSE Manager Server is now supported. Please follow
the upgrade instructions outlined below.

Support for SLE-15 clients

Preliminary support for SLE-15 clients has been added. You need to have a
SLE-15 beta registration code in order to access this product.

Salt action chains

Action chains are enabled for Salt minions now. It works like action chains for
traditional clients, see the documentation for details.

The following actions are supported in Beta2:

  * remote command
  * reboot
  * highstate
  * package remove
  * package install
  * package upgrade
  * apply patches
  * change channels
  * configuration actions
  * image build

Known issues (to be fixed in Beta3):

  * ssh-push minions are not yet supported
  * Updating Salt via patch is not handled properly
  * Temporary files on server are not removed for actions that weren't executed
    because prerequisite failed

Installation

Requirements

SUSE Manager 3.2 Server is an extension for SLES 12 SP3 for x86-64, Power
Systems (ppc64le), or z Systems (s390x).

This means that installation is done in two steps

  * base operating system (SLES 12 SP3)
  * SUSE Manager 3.2 Server extension

This addresses the need of enterprise deployments to standardize on the base
operating system as well as specific storage setups.

It is strongly recommended to use SUSE Manager with the embedded database.
PostgreSQL is only supported as a local (embedded) database.

Registration code

The SUSE Manager 3.2 Server Beta registration code, matching your hardware
architecture, can be used to register the SLES 12 SP3 base system as well.

Installing the SUSE Manager 3.2 Server extension on SLES 12 SP3

You'll need a physical or virtual SLES 12 SP3 x86_64, ppc64le, or s390x system
to install SUSE Manager 3.2 Server.

When you install and register SLES 12 SP3, SUSE Manager 3.2 Server will show up
in the list of available extensions.

You'll need a valid SUSE Manager 3.2 Server Beta registration code to access
this extension.

Update from previous versions of SUSE Manager Server

You can update from SUSE Manager 3.1 Server to SUSE Manager 3.2 Server.

Updates from older versions are not supported.

The actual upgrade can be done as a two-step or a one-step approach.

The two-step approach migrates the SUSE Manager 3.1 Server to SLES 12 SP3
first, followed by an update to SUSE Manager 3.2 Server.

The one-step approach migrates the SUSE Manager 3.1 Server to SUSE Manager 3.2
Server together with the service pack migration of the base system from SLES 12
SP1 to SLES 12 SP3.

See the best practices manual for detailed instructions on how to upgrade.

All connected clients will continue to run and are manageable unchanged.

Migrating from RHN Satellite

Is conditionally supported with SUSE Manager 3.2 Server.

If you have the need to migrate from RHN Satellite to SUSE Manager 3.2 Server,
please get in contact with a SUSE sales engineer or a SUSE consultant before
starting the migration.

Major changes since SUSE Manager Server 3.2 GA

Patches

The SUSE Patch Finder is a simple online service to view released patches.

Major changes since SUSE Manager 3.1 Server

SUSE Manager Proxy versions

SUSE Manager 3.2 Server can work with version 3.1 of SUSE Manager Proxy.

When upgrading, upgrade the server first, followed by proxies. See the advanced
topics manual for detailed upgrade instructions.

Spacewalk 2.8

SUSE Manager 3.2 Server is based on Spacewalk 2.8 with many new features added
by SUSE.

Salt

Salt update to 2018.3.0

Salt has been upgraded to the 2018.3.0 release.

We do intend to upgrade Salt regularly to more recent versions.

Upstream changes since SUSE Manager 3.1

Note: Changes from the upstream project are listed here as-is. There's no
guarantee that all of them are actually available in SUSE Manager 3.2 Server.

Spacewalk 2.7

  * Spacewalk now supported on Fedora 25 and Fedora 26
  * Spacewalk supports Fedora 25 and Fedora 26 clients
  * Improved Debian/Ubuntu version parsing and matching
  * Spacewalk wiki now hosted on GitHub
  * Significant improvements to channel synchronization speed
  * New utility to monitor what taskomatic daemon is doing - taskotop is part
    of spacewalk-utils package
  * jabberd, which support OSAD, now uses sqlite database for improved
    reliability
  * jpackage libraries/packages replaced with standard ones
  * Improved kickstart profile support
  * New API calls:
      + channel.listManageableChannels
      + schedule.failSystemAction
  * API calls restored for backward compatibility:
      + proxy.createMonitoringScout
      + satellite.isMonitoringEnabled
      + satellite.isMonitoringEnabledBySystemId

Support

Supportconfig confidentiality disclaimer

When handling Service Requests, supporters and engineers may ask for the output
of the supportconfig tool from the SUSE Manager Server or clients.

The standard disclaimer applies:

  Detailed system information and logs are collected and organized in a
  manner that helps reduce service request resolution times.
  Private system information can be disclosed when using this tool.

  If this is a concern, please prune private data from the log files.

  Several startup options are available to exclude more sensitive
  information. Supportconfig data is used only for diagnostic purposes
  and is considered confidential information.

In the SUSE Manager Server's case, please be aware that supportconfig's output
will contain information about clients as well.

In particular, debug data for the Subscription Matching feature contain a list
of the registered clients, their installed product and some minimal hardware
information (CPU socket count). It also contains a copy of subscription data
available from the SUSE Customer Center.

If this is a concern, please prune data in the subscription-matcher directory
in the spacewalk-debug tarball.

Supportability of embedded software components

All software components embedded into SUSE Manager, like Cobbler for PXE
booting, are only supported in the context of SUSE Manager. Stand-alone usage
is not supported.

Red Hat Channels

Managing Red Hat clients requires availability of appropriate Red Hat packages.
These are not available through the SUSE Customer Center (SCC) but must be
provided by other means, e.g. from a retired Red Hat Satellite installation.

Support for EOL'ed products

The SUSE Manager engineering team provides 'best effort' support for products
past their end-of-life date. See the Product Support Lifecycle page.

This support is limited to scenarios to bring production systems to a supported
state. Either by migrating to a supported service pack or by upgrading to a
supported product version.

spacewalk-utils

spacewalk-utils, a packaged set of command line tools, continues to be L1*
supported only - with some exceptions. Any of these commands needs expertise
and can break your system. However, we consider these tools valuable enough to
be included, but not fully supported.

* L1 (Problem determination, which means technical support designed to provide
compatibility information, usage support, on-going maintenance, information
gathering and basic troubleshooting using available documentation.)

The following tools of spacewalk-utils are fully supported:

  * spacewalk-clone-by-date
  * spacewalk-sync-setup
  * spacewalk-manage-channel-lifecycle

Providing feedback to our products

In case of encountering a bug please report it through your support contact.

Documentation and other information

Technical Information: SUSE Manager contains additional or updated
documentation for SUSE Manager Server 3.2.

These Release Notes are available online. Further information about SUSE
Manager is available [in the Wiki http://wiki.microfocus.com/index.php/
SUSE_Manager]

Visit http://www.suse.com for the latest Linux product news from SUSE and http:
//www.suse.com/download-linux/source-code.html for additional information on
the source code of SUSE Linux Enterprise products.

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Colophon

Thank you for using SUSE Manager Server in your business.

Your SUSE Manager Server Team.

