Suse releases Linux Enterprise 11 Service Pack 3

BANGALORE, INDIA: Suse released its Linux Enterprise 11 Service Pack 3 (Service Pack 3). This service pack brings additional hardware support and open source features and enhancements to Suse Linux Enterprise 11, an interoperable platform for mission-critical computing - across physical, virtual and cloud environments.

Service Pack 3 gives customers 'scale-up and scale-out' options to run mission-critical workloads with support for new hardware, features and enhancements. Service Pack 3 also includes all patches and updates released since the introduction of Suse Linux Enterprise 11 in 2009.

It can help customers to migrate resource-intensive workloads that run on RISC/UNIX systems. It exhibits virtualized workload support for AMD Opteron 4000 and 6000 series platforms. Service Pack 3 adds support for the latest Intel processors (Intel Xeon processor E5 Family and the 4th generation Intel Core processor).

It supports up to 4096 logical CPUs and 16TiB of system memory. It also has support for IBM zEnterprise System zEC12 Flash Express hardware. Available on x86 (32 bit and 64 bit), Itanium, Power and System z architectures, it delivers enhanced GUI usability.

Service Pack 3 includes commercial support for open source hypervisors, KVM 1.4 and XEN 4.2. At the same time, Service Pack 3 supports hardware features delivered by the latest processors, to improve the efficiency of virtualized workloads. With high-performance x86 hardware, Service Pack 3 can provide a highly virtualized environment to run mission-critical workloads.

Service Pack 3 also offers scale-out for workloads with shared storage, such as web servers and clustered file servers. It includes driver updates, such as Open Fabric Enterprise Distribution (OFED) that give customers faster connection speeds, greater choice of standards and easier fabric management. It also introduces features like LVM thin-provisioning and new iSCSI Target (LIO) for better storage virtualization and management.