[manager-beta] [ANNOUNCE] SUSE Manager 4.1 Public Release Candidate 1 is out!

[SUSE Beta Program]

We are thrilled to announce SUSE Manager 4.1 Public Release Candidate
1

As usual, we have prepared tons of updates and we hope you will like it.

We also now have a new Public Mailing List[1], so you can share your
feedback with our Public Beta Community, our Engineering and our
Product Managers.

Requirements and Beta Registration Codes

SLES 15 SP2 Public Beta is required as base OS, you can retreive it from
here[2]. You will need at least 8 GB of main memory and 100GB of disk
space to install the Server and 4 GB of main memory and 100GB of disk
space to install the Proxy.

Registration is not working with your regular SUSE Manager key,
special Beta Registration Code is required!You need to request one
via email to beta-programs at lists.suse.com.[3]

You only need SUSE Manager 4.1 Beta registration codes for the purpose
of installing the SUSE Manager 4.0 Server, Proxy and Retail. No SUSE
Linux Enterprise Server registration code is needed.

Changes since SUSE Manager 4.0

SUSE Manager 4.1 Beta is based on SLES 15 SP2 Beta! For more details on
SLES 15 SP2 Beta, please visit the dedicated sle-beta Web page[4].

If you are looking for the complete list of changes since SUSE Manager
4.0, please check out our:

Release Notes ›[5]

Changes since Beta 3

New products enabled

- openSUSE Leap 15.2,
- CentOS 6, 7, and 8, Starting with SUSE Manager 4.1, CentOS is
supported as a client and shows in the product tree in the WebUI. If you
were using CentOS via spacewalk-common-channels, you will need to
delete your existing channels, synchronize the channel information
from SCC, and reassign the channels to the clients.
- Oracle Linux 6, 7 and 8, Starting with SUSE Manager 4.1, Oracle Linux
is supported as a client and shows in the product tree in the WebUI.
- Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

New SUSE branding

The SUSE Manager 4.1 WebUI and documentation have been refreshed with
the new SUSE branding guidelines, as published in the SUSE Brand
website[6] and SUSE EOS Design System[7]. The new theme is lighter and
gives a bit more of free space between elements for better
readability.

New documentation

- A new section on how to configure Salt for GitFS to achieve GitOps has
now been added to the Salt Guide,
- In-place automatic upgrade of SUSE Linux Enterprise clients is now
documented, with a sample AutoYaST profile,
- Example SSO implementation with Keycloak.

Cluster Management

SUSE Manager 4.1 implements cluster management of SUSE CaaS Platform
clusters. The following actions are currently supported:

- Register an existing cluster to SUSE Manager,
- Add or remove node to the cluster,
- Promote SLES system to managing node,
- Update cluster as a whole: SUSE Manager works hand-in-hand with
CaaSP to make sure draining, updates, reboots, etc are done properly.

Deployment of CaaSP clusters from scratch will be supported in an
upcoming version of SUSE Manager.

Monitoring enhancements

Grafana has been updated to version 7.0.3 and Prometheus to version
2.18.

Performance improvements

- Reposync, Repository syncing has been optimized to perform in less
time with respect to past versions. The performance improvement
could be up to 6 times faster, depending on the hardware setup
(specifically CPUs and network bandwidth) and number of packages.
- Content Lifecycle Magement, Content Lifecycle Management has been
optimized, with basic operations (build, promotion) up to two orders
of magnitude faster and a quicker UI loading in installations with
many channels and organizations.
- Prometheus Service Discovery. Thanks to a number of enhancements
and optimizations, Prometheus Service Discovery is now 10 times
faster, on average, than it was in SUSE Manager 4.0.

Usability

- Third-party GPG keys now included, Enabling verification of
non-SUSE product metadata used to require manual acceptance, and
sometimes even manual installation, of the third-party keys for
products available from the product tree. Alternatively, an option
to not verify the GPG key signature was there. In addition to SUSE’s,
SUSE Manager 4.1 now includes the GPG keys used to sign packages and/or
metadata by other vendors whose products are available in the product
tree in the WebUI:

-- openSUSE,
-- CentOS,
-- Oracle Linux,
-- Ubuntu,
-- MicroFocus Open Enterprise Server.

Manual acceptance of those keys is no longer required for GPG
signature verification for those products to work. Manual
acceptance of GPG keys for any other product or repository is still
required for security reasons.
- Service Pack migration: remember settings, A common source of
errors in Service Pack Migrations is the human factor: a complex
migration is carefully crafted, dry-run to a success, only to
mysteriously fail in production. More often than not, the reason for
this is when re-creating the migration for production, some step was
forgotten. In SUSE Manager 4.1, the Service Pack Migration feature
has gained memory: you can now re-run successful dry-runs. This is
especially useful when you have configured a complex migration,
tested it successfully, and would like to make sure it runs in
production with exactly the same settings it was designed to run with.
To do this, go to the System Event History of the Dry-run action. There
is a button "Run migration" which lets you execute the Service Package
Migration.

Dropped features: Unpublished patches

The Unpublished Patches feature has been dropped in SUSE Manager
4.1.0. This was a very old feature which originated more than 15 years
ago when Spacewalk was used internally by vendors to manage patches
before making them available to their customers. This functionality
has been superseded a long (more than 10 years) time ago by other
features in Uyuni for sysadmins, and by tools such as the Open Build
Service for operating system vendors. After a consultation period
with users both in the upstream Uyuni community and the SUSE Manager
community, we received no feedback against the removal and executed
on it. This will help us realize even further performance
improvements in several areas, including the commonly-used Content
Lifecycle Management build and promotion operations. If you still
have any unpublished patches, make sure you publish them with SUSE
Manager 4.0 before migrating to SUSE Manager 4.1.

And more

- OpenVPN formula[8]
- Content Lifecycle Management filters for AppStreams[9]
- SUSE Manager for Retail: EFI HTTP booting[10]
- Custom headers for reposync[11]

Please check out our Release Notes[12] for the complete list of
changes.

More information

SUSE Manager Beta Page ›[13]
Release Notes ›[14]
Known issues ›[14]

We are thankful for your support in trying out our beta products and we
welcome your feedback.

Do not hesitate to contact us at beta-programs at lists.suse.com if you
have any questions.

Have fun beta testing!

Your SUSE Manager Team

Click here to unsubscribe[15]


[1]:http://lists.suse.com/mailman/listinfo/manager-beta
[2]:https://www.suse.com/betaprogram/manager-beta/#download
[3]:mailto:beta-programs at lists.suse.com?subject=Requesting%20
a%20SUSE%20Manager%204.1%20Beta%20Registration%20Code&body=Re
questing%20a%20SUSE%20Manager%204.1%20Beta%20Registration%20C
ode

[4]:https://www.suse.com/betaprogram/sle-beta/
[5]:https://www.suse.com/betaprogram/manager-beta/#releasenot
es

[6]:https://www.suse.com
[7]:https://eosdesignsystem.herokuapp.com/
[8]:https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-MANAGER/4.1
/#_openvpn_formula

[9]:https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-MANAGER/4.1
/#_content_lifecycle_management_filters_for_appstreams

[10]:https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-MANAGER/4.
1/#_efi_http_booting

[11]:https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-MANAGER/4.
1/#_custom_headers_for_reposync

[12]:https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-MANAGER/4.
1/

[13]:https://www.suse.com/betaprogram/manager-beta
[14]:https://www.suse.com/betaprogram/manager-beta/#knownissu
es

[15]:mailto:beta-programs at lists.suse.com?subject=Unsubscribe%
20from%20SUSE%20Manager%20Beta&body=Unsubscribe%20from%20SUSE
%20Manager%20Beta

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