innovation, agility, transformation · suse expert days started a couple of years ago in america,...

I N N O VAT I O N , A G I L I T Y, T R A N S F O R M AT I O N

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SUSE, a pioneer in open source software, provides reliable, software-defined infrastructure and application delivery solutions that give enterprises greater control and flexibility. More than 25 years of engineering excellence, exceptional service, and an unrivaled partner ecosystem power the products and support that help our customers manage complexity, reduce cost, and confidently deliver mission-critical services. The lasting relationships we build allow us to adapt and deliver the smarter innovation they need to succeed – today and tomorrow. For more information, visit www.suse.com.

A SUSE Expert Day is a one-day event full of technical conversations and demos, providing

IT professionals with the tools and information they need to keep pace with the evolving

needs of the data center.

SUSE Expert Days started a couple of years ago in America, and soon became a big

success in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Russia, Asia Pacific and Latin America. This

results in a tour with more than 80 stops in which we tell the SUSE story. “We” means all

our SUSE experts, including product managers, architects, consultants, key partners

and IT professionals working together to facilitate discussions on the new key topics that

are relevant to today’s IT professionals.

SUSE Expert Days Presents: Open. Redefined.

There’s more to “Open” than Just the Code.

In today’s business environment, every company is a digital company. IT infrastructure must not only keep pace, but

also move fast enough to accommodate business transformation initiatives related to the Internet of Things and

machine learning, to name a few.

At SUSE Expert Days, we show you how our “open, open source” approach helps our customers and partners to:

• Make room for Innovation

- Learn how you can innovate using the latest open source software-defined infrastructure and application

delivery solutions and leverage automation throughout the DevOps process, which improves IT agility and

efficiency and speeds time to market.

• Create a more agile business

- Learn how software-defined storage and cloud solutions help you quickly respond to changing business needs.

• Transform IT Infrastructure

- Learn how to evolve today’s workloads with the latest open source technologies, while leveraging and

optimizing the infrastructure you already have.

WHO IS SUSE?

SUSE EXPERT DAYS

TRENDSTechnology trends impact everyone, no matter what industry you are

in. For instance, 3D printing is now giving Housing the ability to print

cement houses. And it’s enabling Healthcare to print prosthetics. Big

Data/Analytics/Artificial intelligence is impacting Retailers, giving

them the ability to understand your likes and dislikes based on your

buying history and then advertise specific items to you. And in Media,

content streaming TV providers are recommending other content for

you to watch based on your viewing history. And then there’s Mobile,

which is impacting every industry.

Adopting one or several of these trends, often referred to as digital

or IT transformation, is highly demanding on your software and on

your infrastructure. And that’s not going to stop any time soon.

So, while not all companies have to completely disrupt their business,

all of them, in all industries, have to adapt in one way or another—

if not to innovate and improve, then to at least survive and stay

relevant in their respective markets.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU?All of this has an impact on you as well. It’s you that must respond to

the new demands to speed up time-to-market for new applications,

be more agile in providing IT resources, managing this more complex

environment, and ultimately, enabling the business to deliver

better quality products and services. And, of course, it means

doing all of this while controlling, if not reducing, costs.

Luckily, all these new trends also open up new opportunities and

new ways to deal with IT. There are a lot of new and innovative

technologies that can help you meet these new demands. For

example, open source progress with Linux and virtualization

a couple of decades ago; cloud in the last 10 years; and more

recently containers for applications, software-defined infrastructure,

and Platform as a Service, empowering DevOps principles. Open

source-based technologies have been helping customers to meet

new requirements, and it is pretty clear that all the new innovation is

coming from open source itself.

CHALLENGESCompared to a couple of decades ago, the number of open source

projects today has sky rocketed. From hundreds of projects in

different foundations such as the Linux Foundation, Apache, and

Eclipse, to millions of projects on Github.

On one hand this is absolutely a good thing, fostering innovation

and collaboration across the globe that should not be limited and

controlled. However, it also creates a challenge to meet enterprise

adoption criteria such as security, stability, and the need for long-

term maintenance. This can make it difficult for a company to know

which projects are relevant to their specific needs, which ones to

participate in or test, and ultimately which ones to use in production.

So, where do you start? First, you need to think about which open

source projects are relevant for you, which ones will work within

your existing IT infrastructure and workload deployments. Using

new open source software will not happen in isolation from what

you’ve done in the past and what you’re operating with today.

Which of the new projects work well together today? Will they

also work in the future, including with technologies that haven’t

even been invented yet?

How do you know which open source projects are enterprise ready

and are really viable in the long run? What skills and support do

you need to be successful?

SUSE. OPEN. REDEFINED.SUSE turns these promising open source technologies into

reliable, hardened solutions through extensive testing and QA.

And then we back those solutions with enterprise-grade services

and support. We also make sure they work seamlessly together, as

well as with your existing infrastructure and applications.

We pride ourselves on being the open, open source company.

And it is not just about the code being open, or just about what

we do—open source—but also about how we do it. We engage

with communities and encourage contribution and collaboration,

even with our competitors. We understand that our customers

need solutions that are optimized for mixed IT environments and

that they want to use best-of-breed stacks, not just technology

from a single vendor. This also means that “open” can, in fact, be

the integration of proprietary and open source technologies. This

provides our customers with the ability to protect the investment

in their existing IT infrastructure, while also increasing agility and

reducing risks and costs.

Open. Redefined.

SOFTWARE-DEFINED INFRASTRUCTURESUSE has been successful in delivering an enterprise-grade

Linux operating system for nearly 25 years. Looking back, Linux

is a set of APIs and services that abstract away the details of

the underlying hardware infrastructure to make it possible to

write applications. Along with that, we have provided tools

such as SUSE Manager to simplify installation, operation

and maintenance of the environment. About 10 years ago,

we started to see the emergence of the software-defined

infrastructure and a bit more recently, the emergence of cloud-

native applications. These new approaches require new tools

and extend the role of the operating system.

Specifically around software-defined infrastructure, there is also

a need for APIs to control resources. This is addressed by SUSE OpenStack Cloud, making it easy to deploy and manage a wide

range of software-defined solutions such as compute, storage

and networking.

CLOUDMore recently, we have seen a move toward cloud-native application

development, and SUSE is offering two closely related products.

First, SUSE CaaS Platform combines a container-optimized

version of SUSE Linux with Kubernetes to enable the deployment

and management of applications. And second, the most recent

addition to the SUSE portfolio is SUSE Cloud Application Platform,

adding a Cloud Foundry-certified PaaS that combines a variety

of runtimes and pre-defined services to enable developers to

quickly create and deploy new business services. Uniquely, SUSE

recognizes that the right approach might be to use both CaaS and

PaaS in a single environment so that both plain containers and

Cloud Foundry apps can coexist in the same environment.

From the beginning, SUSE has provided tools to simplify

deploying and operating complex systems with SUSE Manager.

As SUSE provides new solutions such as cloud and software-

defined storage, we are also adding tools such as Cloud

Monitoring and openATTIC storage management, along with

deployment and maintenance tools to automate and simplify

rolling out new capabilities.

We also fully recognize that public cloud is an important part

of today’s IT. To support this, SUSE created a Cloud Provider

Program. Initially designed to enable on-demand consumption

of SUSE Linux in offerings such as Amazon Web Services/

Microsoft Azure/Google Cloud Platform/IBM Cloud and other

cloud providers, this has expanded to cover our other products,

such as SUSE Manager and SLES for SAP Applications. This

enables you to use public clouds in different layers of the stack,

depending on the specific workload and data demand, as well

as bridge that with onprem via hybrid cloud management

solutions. And there is more to come—we will continue to make

public clouds a priority for SUSE solutions.

Finally, we don’t intend such a stack to be all or nothing. The

SUSE commitment to openness means that we will continue

to work with partners to provide customers with options at all

layers in the stack.

OPEN SOURCE AT THE HEART

All of our products and solutions are based on one or more

upstream open source projects. We contribute to them with

code and also governance for the benefit of the communities, the

projects themselves, and our customers. Once tested, integrated,

packaged and supported, it is our promise that you can benefit

from these solutions for your real-life enterprise needs.

An important aspect of our effort is that we’re not doing all of this

in isolation. SUSE works with a broad set of technology, service

and integration partners across the globe, ensuring that our

solutions support a wide range of applications and infrastructure

technologies. This includes global partners such as IBM, Fujitsu,

Huawei, Microsoft and SAP, as well as regional partner.

SUSE Software-defined Infrastructure & Application Delivery Approach

JOINT ENGINEERINGOur relationship with Microsoft began long before Linux was a

growth platform for them. Ten years later, it is one of our deepest

partnerships – with the same focus on delivering exceptional,

interoperable solutions for enterprise IT. As an example of our joint

enterprise focus, consider the SAP environment. With a combined

40 years’ of experience in collaborating with SAP, both SUSE and

Microsoft understand what is needed to deliver reliability, availability,

and security for mission-critical IT.

Learning from our thousands of joint customers, we collaborate on

a roadmap to ensure that our combined offerings have been jointly

engineered, tuned, and optimized for Microsoft Azure. Another example

of how we build together is our joint engineering efforts to ensure a

consistent experience on purpose-built Azure infrastructure, built to

support some of the world’s largest SAP HANA environments. All Expert

Days demos run on Microsoft Azure!

MORE TO COMEThere are a wide variety of SUSE solutions available on Azure and

Azure Stack to provide hybrid cloud federation and capabilities

when needed – for example, applications running on SLES for

HPC and container-based applications using SUSE CaaS Platform.

Looking forward, you’ll find that the majority of SUSE solutions will

be available on or integrated with Azure, including the new SUSE

Cloud Application Platform. Furthermore, Microsoft and SUSE are

continually working together on other areas of interoperability,

including SQL Server on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, .NET core,

and even SUSE Linux on Windows 10 and the Windows Store! This

shows how SUSE works with partners to provide flexibility and

choice to our customers.

Read about how SUSE’s “open, open source” approach helps customers

and partners to Make Room for Innovation, Create a More Agile

Business, and Transform IT Infrastructure with SUSE Linux Enterprise

Server, SLES4SAP, SUSE Manager, SUSE OpenStack Cloud, SUSE

Enterprise Storage and SUSE Containers as a Services Platform.

SUSE and Microsoft Collaborating for Success

Leverage the Latest Innovations to Stay in the GameTo beat the competition, you must be able to develop and deliver

new solutions faster, leveraging the latest innovations.

To get ahead of your competition and stay in the game, you must

be able to leverage the latest innovations. This applies even more

so in highly competitive industries, where the latest technology

and faster release cycles can help your business stand apart. With

each new release, you get valuable customer feedback that can

help you respond better to shifting customer needs — which you

can address sooner with your next revision/release cycle.

What does this mean to you? It means you must redefine how you

bring services to market. You need to be able to take advantage

of new technologies (containers, AI, Machine Learning) without

interrupting your current infrastructure workloads, so that you can

quickly develop and deliver new solutions to the market. It means

using automation and streamlined processes that support CI/CD

and a DevOps adoption.

Can you quickly take advantage of new innovations without

impacting your current infrastructure demands? Are you adopting a

DevOps approach to increase market responsiveness? If you want to

stay in the game, the key to success is innovation.

Redefine How You Bring Services to Market with SUSE & DevOpsAs you take advantage of those new innovations and redefine how

you bring new services to market, SUSE solutions can help you.

Our software-defined infrastructure and application delivery

approach provides the innovative and agile infrastructure you

need to support DevOps and CI/CD. Our approach is open and

flexible so that you can leverage the right tools and innovations to

meet your needs. That, ultimately, will result in supporting faster

development and delivery of new services. But moving faster

should not get in the way of quality. In fact, it’s just the opposite.

In the DevOps model, developers and operational engineers are

involved in every step of the process, from design through release.

By moving faster, businesses can fail fast — building new products,

testing, and updating until they get it right. And increased

automation, visibility (with real-time dashboards), and testing

improves the quality of each new release.

With DevOps, companies can develop better and more context-

aware mobile experiences, more interactive ecommerce

experiences, and other apps and software that, again, set you

apart from the competition.

If You Are Thinking DevOps, Think SUSESUSE offers a flexible application delivery and SDI approach with

solutions that support each phase of the DevOps cycle. We believe

in using the latest open source technologies, processes, and tools

to support your DevOps process.

Best of all, we publish our tools (IP) via open source projects that

we use for DevOps (e.g., OBS and OpenQA) and these tools are

integrated with other standard DevOps tools (e.g., Jenkins). This

means you can choose the tools and technologies that best meet

your specific needs. Let’s take a closer at the SUSE Solutions that

help you take advantage of the latest technology innovations and

beat your competition

Innovation

7suse.com

SOLUTION GUIDE: SUSE EXPERT DAYS 2018

SUSE CaaS Platform

Before virtualization, bringing up a new server took days.

Virtualization reduced the time to minutes and now, with

containers, it takes just seconds. Linux container technologies

provide highly efficient and low overhead OS-level virtualization.

Also, they are designed to work well with other virtualization

technologies supported by the Linux distribution.

What Is SUSE CaaS Platform?SUSE® CaaS (Container as a Service) Platform is an enterprise-

class container management platform that enables IT and DevOps

professionals to more easily deploy, manage, and scale container-

based applications and services. As a result, enterprises can

reduce application delivery cycle times and improve their business

agility. SUSE CaaS Platform helps you to achieve enterprises can

reduce application delivery cycle times and improve their business

agility. As a result, enterprises can reduce application delivery

cycle times and improve their business agility faster time-to-value,

simplify management and control of your container platform, and

maximize return on your investment.

SUSE CaaS Platform is designed for fast deployment of container-

based applications. You can deploy SUSE CaaS Platform on your

physical machines or use it on virtual machines. After deployment,

it is ready to run out of the box and provides high scalability of

your cluster.

SUSE CaaS Platform was designed to simplify transformation of

applications into container-based applications. Creating clouds

with container-based applications is much easier, because you

avoid problems with compatibility and dependencies. To enable

as fast an application deployment as possible, a container

orchestration framework such as Kubernetes is recommended.

What SUSE CaaS Platform Includes

• Industry-leading Kubernetes container orchestration

technology, for automating deployment, scaling, and

management of container-based applications

• Container engine and image registry, for storing and running

containers that use the open source Docker container format

• SUSE MicroOS, a purpose-built OS to run containers while

delivering the security, scalability, and robustness of SUSE

Linux Enterprise

• Complementary open source technologies, such as

- Kubernetes extensions such as Helm, for deploying

applications at scale

- SUSE-managed container images for useful workloads, such

as MariaDB and SUSE Linux Enterprise-based container images

- An open interface for leveraging other extensions not

packaged directly in the platform

While SUSE CaaS Platform inherits the benefits of SUSE Linux

Enterprise and uses tools and technologies well-known to

system administrators (such as cloud-init, Kubernetes, or Salt),

the main innovation (compared to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server)

comes with transactional updates. A transactional update is an

update that can be installed when the system is running, without

any down time. The transaction update can be rolled back, so

if the upgrade fails or the update is not compatible with your

infrastructure, you can restore the previous state.

“The reduction in duplication doesn’t just free up resources on the server, it frees up other resources too. This is among the primary drivers of containers in enterprise IT—to reduce overhead and boost efficiency.”

– 451 Research

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SUSE Cloud Application Platform

Speed Delivery of Traditional and Cloud-Native ApplicationsSUSE Cloud Application Platform is a modern application delivery

platform used by software development and operations teams

to streamline lifecycle management of traditional and new cloud-

native applications. Bringing together industry-leading Cloud

Foundry and Kubernetes technologies, the platform facilitates

DevOps process integration to accelerate innovation, improve IT

responsiveness, and maximize return on investment.

SUSE Cloud Application Platform increases business agility by

helping your software development and operations teams to:

• Accelerate innovation with a single platform that brings

together industry leading Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes

technologies for rapid application delivery at scale

• Reduce complexity and improve IT efficiency with a lean cloud

application platform that is easy to install, simple to scale, and

effortless to maintain

• Maximize return on your investment with enterprise-ready,

industry leading technologies

Transforming Your Business with MicroservicesSUSE Expert Thomas Di Giacomo

Digital, digital, digital. It doesn’t matter the size of

the organization, most companies are grappling

with the proliferation and sharing of data and

constant service expectations from devices,

systems, and human beings. And if you are in

IT management, you are intimately aware

of the high demand that digital places on your

software and IT infrastructure. Of course, you

have to control costs at the same time and keep the existing

infrastructure running!

You are facing several challenges beyond the amount of data

and costs. You are probably investigating the development of

new processes, experiencing internal cultural changes (such

as departments outside of IT leading technology acquisitions),

plus assessing a plethora of new and innovative technologies to

address your organizational and competitive challenges.

I’m not telling you anything new when I say that it can be quite

complicated to find a good match among all those new

technologies and the specific problems you need to solve or the

benefits you want to realize. Then you have to try to assemble

the technology pieces together by yourself and maintain the

puzzle over time, while trying to add new pieces to it. How can

you survive and thrive in this environment?

SUSE and our partners have been working with customers to

develop solutions that help them to meet the challenges that

come with digital growth and help them flourish. And we do

this in a way that provides agile computing and infrastructure

that supports continuous delivery/deployment of large, complex

applications – existing ones as well as new cloud-native apps.

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Agility

Earn Bonus Points by Improving Business Agility“There is no off season in business…” Building a software-defined

infrastructure using open source will enable you to increase agility

and earn those bonus points. With a larger community of

developers supporting the evolution of open source solutions,

innovation can happen at a more rapid pace. Open source

communities are driving innovations from the hardware layer with

Open Compute Project (OCP), the operating system with Linux, to

containers with Open Container Initiative & Kubernetes (OCI and

K8s), to creating clouds with OpenStack and cloud application

platforms with Cloud Foundry.

These communities are driving the next wave of innovation, which

continues to optimize and improve your ability to respond faster.

And they are doing it with:

• Better quality and security – driven by and validated

by the community. With more individuals participating

in the development and testing of the code in more unique

environments, open source solutions have fewer feature bugs

and security exposures.

• Lower cost – open source solutions are available for “free.”

However, most companies do not want the burden of

supporting the infrastructure software themselves. Thus, they

choose a vendor’s distribution and pay only for support (no

cost for the SW license).

• No Vendor Lock-in – open source solutions that stay true to

the open APIs and interfaces mean that if you build on top of

those APIs and then decide you aren’t happy with the

underlying vendor’s solution, you can move with “less pain”

because any work you did to integrate should work with any

other distribution.

Open, Flexible, and AgileSUSE software-defined infrastructure solutions help you to leverage

the latest innovations while ensuring that you can meet your

enterprise business requirements by delivering an agile IT

infrastructure that:

• Is modular. This could be done with virtualization or containers

to break up physical resources into smaller, more modular

pieces that can be used for specific application purposes with

the capability to scale specific services based on demand.

• Enables automated and orchestrated IT processes, to improve

IT efficiency, reduce human error, and increase IT agility.

• Has tools for consolidated management of resources, so that IT

staff can quickly and easily manage the infrastructure resources

no matter where they sit (in your data center or off site).

• Is self-healing. Reduce the burden on IT with the capability to

quickly identify increased demand or issues with response

times and then automatically heal themselves.

SUSE does this while also staying true to the original vision of

open source.

We understand that you have mixed technology environments.

Our solutions will work with what you have today and plan to use

tomorrow, including integration with proprietary and other open

source technologies.

Our flexible and adaptive solutions let you choose what works

for you (Hypervisor, middleware, IaaS, PaaS, management tools,

applications), with no vendor lock-in and support for industry

standards.

We do this all while giving you the benefits of open source with

enterprise support – solutions that have been tested and hardened

to deliver the enterprise reliability, availability, and scalability your

business requires.

SUSE Software-defined Infrastructure and Application Delivery Approach

As mentioned earlier, we have redefined open, delivering an SDI

and Application Delivery approach using the latest open source

technologies and standard APIs. Our comprehensive and flexible set

of solutions enable you to improve agility while ensuring that you can

meet your enterprise business demands.

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Cloud

OpenStack Cloud InfrastructureEverything is moving fast these days and your business simply has

to keep up. The pace of change can be painful to manage, but it also

creates new opportunities that you simply cannot ignore.

How can you cope with the challenge and take full advantage of the

opportunities offered?

An OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure is the answer. An OpenStack

Cloud Infrastructure is a cloud operating system and a set of software

tools – all managed through a dashboard that controls large pools

of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a data

center.

It provides an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) for your data

center that gives your users access to automated pools of IT

resources to run applications and workloads. It also gives you

the flexibility to respond quickly and easily to new demands

and provides a platform for increased innovation while helping

you to control and reduce costs. And, it gives you the flexibility

to respond quickly and easily to new demands and provides the

ideal platform for development and for increased innovation,

while helping you to control and reduce costs.

OpenStack is backed by a community of thousands of individual

members, as well as leading software development and hosting

companies. According to Gartner analysts, by 2019, OpenStack

enterprise deployments will grow tenfold, up from just hundreds

of production deployments today, due to increased maturity and

growing ecosystem support.

SUSE OpenStack Cloud – Combine OpenStack Agility with Enterprise ReliabilityYour business needs the flexibility to respond quickly and easily to

new demands. SUSE OpenStack Cloud gives you just that. It also

provides the ideal platform for increased innovation, while helping

you to control and reduce costs. It delivers enterprise-ready

technology for building Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) private

clouds, giving you access to automated pools of IT resources to

efficiently develop and run applications and workloads in your

data center. SUSE OpenStack Cloud is based on OpenStack, the

leading open solution for private clouds. SUSE OpenStack Cloud

closely integrates with SUSE Enterprise Storage, powered by Ceph,

for highly scalable and resilient software-defined storage capabilities.

Key Benefits • Streamlined installation process

• Integrated with the SUSE portfolio

• Reliable and production-ready

• Based on OpenStack Newton release

• Supports SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 Service Pack 2

Enterprise Reliability for Production-ready WorkloadsSUSE provides easy and automatic installation of high availability

services for OpenStack to help avoid unplanned downtime. This

ensures that you can continue to access the key cloud resources

you need. SUSE OpenStack Cloud 6 also provides high-availability

for the Linux compute nodes and workloads. This makes it easier

to support traditional or business-critical workloads that were not

originally designed for a cloud architecture.

Deliver Business Value and Investment ProtectionOpenStack delivers a feature-rich and future-proofed cloud

investment. It’s the ideal platform for building your private

cloud infrastructure. As an open source solution, it offers

choice and flexibility, while also helping you to avoid the risk

of vendor lock-in and the high cost often associated with

proprietary cloud offerings.

Easily Build and Manage Cloud ApplicationsSUSE Studio™ and SUSE Manager enable you to create and

manage Linux workloads across private and public clouds.

The OpenStack Solution of Choice for Business-Critical Private CloudsOpenStack Cloud 7 is based on OpenStack Newton and built on

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2, the leading open source

platform for enterprise workloads. It also closely integrates with

SUSE Enterprise Storage powered by Ceph, for highly scalable

and resilient software-defined storage capabilities.

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SUSE OpenStack Cloud – More to This than Meets the Eye

SUSE Expert Terri Schlosser

Organizations that are looking for a more

agile IT infrastructure to provide a competitive

advantage are finding that an OpenStack

private cloud is a good place to begin their

transformation. SUSE® OpenStack Cloud is a

proven, enterprise-ready solution that can help

organizations future-proof their infrastructure

with an open source, IaaS approach. But there

is more to this than meets the eye.

SUSE OpenStack Cloud customers have realized many benefits in

the years after adoption. In a recent, SUSE-commissioned study from

Forrester, “The Total Economic Impact™ of SUSE OpenStack Cloud,”

many of these were explained.

The report shows a number of benefits that help make the case that

migrating to SUSE OpenStack Cloud will provide a tangible return

on investment (ROI), such as half a million dollars in time and staff

savings. But there are also benefits that OpenStack Cloud customers

saw that might not have an obvious financial impact.

Here are a few examples:

A Partner with Proven ReliabilityThe study found that SUSE OpenStack Cloud customers were

pleased with their working relationship with SUSE, because we not

only helped them understand how to migrate and manage their

private cloud, but also provided help and support when needed.

According to one customer, “That’s more important than the

technology itself.”

Standardizing and Validating PoliciesOne customer was able to use the new private cloud environment to

evaluate each of the organization’s processes and determine whether

or not each process was valid. Each time, the IT team asked, “What

is that process for?” Those new criteria helped to streamline the way

the business was organized.

Standardizing Internal Service OfferingsThat same customer was also able to create service levels for

internal stakeholders, based on CPU usage and virtual machine (VM)

configuration. Users pay a higher rate when they use more minutes,

which helps the internal IT team price usage on a consistent scale.

The Senior Solutions Architect said, “It works for us as a central IT

group, and it helps the developers.”

Defining IT RolesAnother SUSE OpenStack Cloud customer is changing the way

it organizes its IT as a result of adoption. It plans to have a cloud

administrator, engineer, architect, specialist, and product manager.

Starting out, some team members might have dual responsibilities,

but as the organization grows, that could change. “We expect that

they will become unique roles and important to the growth and

maturity of our environment,” said an executive with the organization.

With SUSE OpenStack Cloud, there is more than meets the eye.

That is why when determining ROI for private cloud adoption, it’s

important to consider the benefits you can’t quantify, along with

those you can. The “Total Economic Impact™ of SUSE OpenStack

Cloud” report provides additional detail on the methodology that

Forrester used to determine tangible and intangible benefits.

12suse.com


SUSE Public Cloud – Accelerate Innovation and Time-to-Market

Increase Agility, Lower CostShift upfront capital expense to pay-as-you-go operational

expense. Whether migrating existing workloads or developing

and deploying new applications, SUSE eases your transition to

the public cloud.

Fast Lane to the Cloud – from Zero to Agile in a Few ClicksIt’s rush hour in your data center, but you’re traveling in the

express lane with SUSE. No other Linux distribution makes it easier

to migrate your existing workloads or stand up new workloads in

the cloud.

Running your SUSE solutions at large global providers like AWS,

Azure, and Google as on-demand instances, or with regional

hosters as dedicated managed servers, you’ll take advantage of

the boost to your agility that the express lane offers.

Reliability, Security, and Performance – Don’t Sacrifice Uptime for AgilityThe loss of a mission-critical application or service due to

downtime is just as expensive to your business whether your

applications are running in the cloud or in your data center.

Choosing SUSE Linux Enterprise in the public cloud ensures

that you stay up-to-date with the latest security patches,

feature enhancements, and bug fixes.

Get on-demand compute resources that enable you to extend

your on-premises HPC cluster to Amazon Web Services and

Microsoft Azure when you need more capacity. Easy to set up and

use, SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension eliminates

your anxiety over data loss with real-time synchronization that

quickly restores clustered services and intelligent locking mechanisms

that maintain data integrity, helping you maintain continuity, protect

data integrity, and maximize uptime.

Bring Your Own Subscription – Transfer the Benefits of Your Current SubscriptionIf you are already a SUSE customer and you are moving to the

cloud, you can easily migrate your existing subscriptions to

select SUSE Certified Public Cloud Service Providers. The SUSE

Bring Your Own Subscription program allows you to transfer the

benefits of your current subscription, including your level of SUSE

support, to your workloads running in a public cloud. Confidently

extend your data center to the public cloud and ensure the same

level of SUSE service across all of your infrastructures—data

center, private, or public cloud—while ramping up innovation and

lowering costs.

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SUSE Enterprise Storage – Faster, More Efficient, and Simpler to Manage

SUSE Enterprise Storage is an intelligent, software-defined storage

solution, powered by Ceph technology that enables IT to transform

their enterprise storage infrastructure to deliver highly scalable and

resilient storage that is cost-efficient and able to seamlessly adapt to

changing business and data demands.

Affordable Data Storage without Expensive Proprietary HardwareFor enterprise-level businesses, the demand for additional data

storage is growing too fast for traditional storage options to

continue to be an affordable solution. Continuing down this path

means you’ll be forced to increase your budget dramatically in

order to keep up with your data needs.

However, there is another answer: SUSE Enterprise Storage. This

intelligent, software-defined storage solution, powered by Ceph

technology, enables you to transform your enterprise storage

infrastructure and reduce costs while providing unlimited

scalability. The result is an affordable and easy-to-manage

enterprise storage solution.

Key Benefits • Reduce Cost

• Simplify Management

• Adapt Quickly

• Scale Easily

Highly Scalable and ResilientSUSE Enterprise Storage provides a single, unified software-

defined storage cluster that provides applications with object and

block storage designed with unlimited scalability from terabytes

to petabytes, with no single points of failure, to maximize system

resiliency and to maximize application availability following

hardware failures.

Reduced IT CostsTraditional storage solutions are expensive to scale in capacity

and performance. SUSE Enterprise Storage uses commodity

hardware to keep CAPEX costs down, helps reduce IT operational

expense with a single tool for managing a storage cluster for

your heterogeneous server environment, and helps to optimize

infrastructure without growing your IT staff by automatically

rebalancing data placement without any manual intervention.

Seamlessly Adapt to Changing Business and DataSUSE Enterprise Storage enables you to be highly responsive

to emerging needs. It can automatically respond to changing

demands with self-managed and self-healing storage that optimizes

for system performance, enables you to easily provision and

seamlessly deliver additional storage without disruption, and

provides maximum flexibility by using off-the-shelf commodity

hardware that you can repurpose if business priorities change.

14suse.com

How Enterprises Hedge their (Storage) Bets in an Uncertain World

SUSE Expert Jason Phippen

1.‘Betting the farm’ is dangerous. Maintain multiple storage vendors.It can be tempting to take hold of a vendor’s short- and medium-

term pricing strategy by placing all of your business with them

and generating operational simplicity in the process. One set of

storage tools and processes does make things easier and it might

look particularly attractive in the cloud. But if you go ‘all in,’ you

are playing poker with your storage budget and gambling that

your vendor partners will not punish you with price increases later.

2. Pay attention to the cloud war – it has not been won.Unquestionably, Amazon currently has the lead in adoption over

Microsoft Azure and Google Compute. Nevertheless, everyone

knows that Amazon is playing a ‘long game’ of profit tomorrow,

not today. Hence, many have a foot in Azure or Google Compute

(even when they have a leg in AWS), because there must be an

exit plan. But this comes with a price and that price is operational

complexity – a price that can be particularly high in the world of

storage, where the new pricing models can be about how much

data you move down the wire rather than how much you own.


3.Maintain and expand your skill sets to avoid lock down.It’s tempting to reduce complexity by standardizing on a small

set of suppliers. The upside is that you get simplicity. One

approach to storage means that it’s easy to train staff. Some

suppliers are no longer necessary in a cloud scenario and,

arguably, this means you can get on with the ‘core business’ of

serving your customers that proprietary vendors love to tell you

about. However, if you don’t know how to exit AWS to move

to Azure without crippling operations, if you don’t know how

much it costs to repatriate data, and if you have nowhere to put

it when you do, you are locked down. See point #1.

4. Use open source software-defined storage – or pay more.If you use only cloud or only proprietary software, your software

and hardware costs will always be greater than they need to be.

This is a simple fact: open source means cost savings from moving

to commodity hardware and the total elimination of proprietary

software costs. Proprietary storage vendors will tell you – rightly

– that costs can reappear as skilled headcount, consultancy, and

support. But then, if you don’t have skilled headcount, how are

you going to maintain your capability to switch cloud providers

and how are you going to assess which vendors to use? Well,

given that the obvious answer is hire expensive consultants, we

would argue that the proprietary sales argument is somewhat

duplicitous.

Lock down is a perennial fear for enterprises: nobody wants to find, having bet the farm, that they are at the mercy of a vendor who knows the customer cannot operate without them. So how do you get your storage strategy right? Storage strategy has to follow the main enterprise strategy. And for the following reasons, open source should be part of your strategy.

15suse.com

Transformation

Take the Spot by Transforming ITThe only way to win is to quickly adapt to meet changing business

demands. That means IT Transformation. However, Transformation

isn’t easy. You have to be able to transform while also maintaining

and managing what you have today. And because everyone’s IT

infrastructure is different, so will be everyone’s transformation

journey. Most organizations start with their new (often “cloud-native”)

applications, building them from the beginning using microservices

and deploying them as containers on a resource they got from their

“cloud.” And then they build out plans for the applications they are

currently running in VMs. Their next step is figuring out how to break

up the applications into smaller pieces for deployment in containers.

For those with many legacy applications, Transformation will be a

long, sometimes painful, process.


SUSE Software-defined Infrastructure and Application Delivery ApproachComing back to our open & flexible infrastructure, you can see that

we have solutions for abstracting the physical with our software-

defined Infrastructure layer, the application delivery solutions

to help you build the “aaS” processes and services that your

business requires, and the infrastructure and lifecycle management

solutions you need to manage the increasingly complex

infrastructure. There are many places you might decide to start

your transformation journey. You could start with virtualization,

software-defined storage, and SDN. And then you might want

to deliver IaaS as part of a private cloud solution, offering your

developers quick access to the VMs, storage, and networking

resources they need for a new project. Maybe you want to build

out a CaaS platform to provide containers and a MicroOS for new

application development and delivery. Or maybe your business

requires building a Platform as a Service solution to provide an

easy-to-use web application development environment. In many

cases, it will be some combination of all of those. SUSE offers a

comprehensive set of solutions and, more importantly, we build

them using open source technologies and standard APIs, so

we can integrate with your existing infrastructure or other public

cloud resources. No matter where you start, having a flexible

platform to build on is critical.

Start Your Transformation with SUSESUSE’s broad set of solutions enable you to transform your

infrastructure, ultimately helping you to:

• Reduce costs by streamlining operations, using open

source software and leveraging your existing infrastructure

or commodity hardware.

• Increase agility and efficiency by giving your IT staff the

tools they need to maintain control of infrastructure

resources with automation and cloud-based, self-service

capabilities.

• Enabling IT to respond to the needs of the business in

hours or days, not weeks or months.

SUSE does all of this while ensuring business continuity with

an infrastructure that is highly available, helping you to ensure

application performance and avoid unplanned downtime.

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SUSE Manager

SUSE Manager – Turn Time Spent on Maintenance into Time Spent on Growth

OverviewRapid data center, IT infrastructure and technology advancements

such as software-defined infrastructure, cloud computing, and

containers have created endless new opportunities. But those

new opportunities for IT innovation also bring new management

challenges. What can you do to reduce complexity? Where can

you get help with the challenges of managing diverse resources?

The answer is SUSE Manager.

Built for Linux, SUSE Manager delivers a best-in-class open source

IT infrastructure management solution for your software-defined

infrastructure. It’s designed to help your enterprise DevOps and

IT Operations teams to reduce complexity and regain control

of IT assets by enabling comprehensive management of your

Linux systems, VMs, and containers with a single, centralized

solution. SUSE Manager includes the Salt open source software

and provides automated and cost-effective software, asset,

patch, and configuration management, as well as system

provisioning, orchestration, and monitoring capabilities. These

capabilities enable you to easily manage and maintain your

enterprise Linux system deployment across physical, virtual, and

cloud environments. As a result, your organization can decrease

total cost of ownership while securing enterprise systems and

improving compliance and service quality.

Key BenefitsSUSE Manager is a best-in-class open source infrastructure

management solution that helps you to address the 3 “Cs.” As a key

part of a software-defined infrastructure (SDI), it empowers IT to:

• Optimize operations and reduce costs by enabling IT

administrators to automate their Linux server provisioning,

patching, and configuration for faster, consistent, and

repeatable server deployments.


• Reduce complexity and regain control of your IT assets with

a single tool to manage Linux systems across a variety of

hardware architectures, virtual and container images, and

cloud platforms.

• Ensure compliance with internal security policies and

external regulations with automated monitoring and

tracking that enable you to provide the auditing and

reporting needed.

Why Do I Need SUSE Manager?

Controlling ComplexityIn any data center operation, manual processes to configure,

monitor, update, and patch servers can be time-consuming,

labor-intensive, and error-prone. Automated Linux server

management with SUSE Manager reduces administrator

effort, increases productivity, and reduces outages. You can

use SUSE Manager as a single console to quickly see the

status of large numbers of systems and to identify those that

require security updates. You can search for operating system

instances by packages, patches, or system specifications to

reduce administrative overhead. SUSE Manager also automates

provisioning of software packages, including updates, so that

you can fix security and compliance problems before they

impact your business.

Even if all of your applications run on Linux, you might still have

a complex environment to manage. Multiple Linux distributions

for your applications, physical and virtual servers and storage

systems, private and public cloud deployments: deploying and

updating all of these with different tools can take a lot of your

time and energy.

SUSE ManagerSUSE Manager is the best open source solution to manage

Linux system configuration and compliance across multiple

Linux distributions, all from a centralized console: hardware

platforms (including x86, IBM Power Systems, and z Systems);

physical, virtual, container; and cloud environments. Hypervisor

support includes open source KVM and Xen, as well as Microsoft

Hyper-V, VMware, and zVM. It works with SUSE OpenStack

cloud-based private clouds, Amazon EC2, and other public

cloud platforms. With a software-defined infrastructure, you

could have workloads running in any combination of these

environments, so you need a single set of management tools

that supports them all – helping you to reduce complexity and

regain control of your IT assets.

17suse.com


Containers Adding Complexity? SUSE Manager 3.1 Can Help

SUSE Expert Terri Schlosser

Are you adopting or looking to adopt container

technology? Have you thought about the

additional management capabilities you will

need to manage container-based deployments?

We announced SUSE Manager 3.1, with new

features focused on setting up and managing

container infrastructures, ensuring container

and cloud VM compliance, and improving the

visibility of systems and infrastructure deployments.

Compliance & CostsIn any data center operation, manual processes to configure, monitor,

update, and patch servers can be time-consuming, labor-intensive,

and error-prone. Automated Linux server management with SUSE

Manager reduces administrator effort, increases productivity, and

reduces outages. You can use SUSE Manager as a single console to

quickly see the status of large numbers of systems, and identify

those that require security updates. You can search for operating

system instances by packages, patches, or system specifications to

reduce administrative overhead. It also automates provisioning of

software packages, including updates, so that you can fix security

and compliance problems before they impact your business. You

can maintain the latest status of your operations by scheduling scans

and viewing reports that show you where to focus your system

update time and effort. All of this leads to optimized operations and a

reduction in IT costs.

SUSE Manager 3.1 also extends the powerful CVE audit feature

to scan your containers (and will also be adding VMs soon). This

enables you to identify all systems that you are responsible for

and that need a certain security patch, providing you the ability

to have total control and react quickly if a security patch needs

to be applied to your infrastructure.

All of this helps you to:

• Improve DevOps efficiency and optimize operations with a single tool to set up and manage container infrastructures. IT

Operations and DevOps teams can quickly build and deliver

container-based images, based on their SUSE Manager

repositories, in addition to automating and managing container

images across development, test, and production environments

–supporting the DevOps continuous integration/continuous

deployment model.

• Ensure container and cloud virtual machine compliance to hardened profiles/templates across DevOps environments, based on your own internal security policies. Customers

can make sure workloads deployed for development, test, and

production in hybrid cloud and container infrastructures adhere

to internal security and compliance standards.

• Reduce complexity and regain control of IT assets with improved visibility of your systems and infrastructure deployments. Improved graphical visualization of your IT systems and their

relationships provides additional understanding of infrastructure

dependencies and can help you reduce complexities. You can also

further regain control of your IT assets with the ability to drill down

into system details to quickly identify and resolve any health or

patch issues with your systems.

18suse.com


SLE for SAP

OverviewSmoothly transition to S/4HANA with SUSE Linux Enterprise

Server for SAP Applications, delivering optimized performance,

less downtime, faster deployment, and conversion of SAP ERP

and BPM applications to Linux. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for

SAP Applications is the premier operating environment for SAP

environments and the first solution that supports both Intel/AMD

x86-64 and IBM POWER processor-based servers for SAP HANA.

Key Features • Built-in, high-availability clustering with automated failover

and recovery for SAP HANA reduces downtime.

• Installation wizard fully automates SAP HANA, S/4HANA,

and NetWeaver installation configuration and tuning, and

integrates with SUSE Manager.

• Aids the transition to SAP landscapes on Microsoft

Windows Server to S/4HANA on Linux.

• Page cache limit sustains SAP application performance.

• Seamless 24 x 7 priority support from SAP and SUSE.

Increase Service AvailabilityReduce downtime of critical operations with built-in business

continuity, including an advanced high availability solution with

automated data recovery for SAP HANA, and features to secure

in-memory systems and storage.

Improve Overall PerformanceBoost performance for mission-critical SAP NetWeaver ERP, BPM,

and other applications with the Linux OS that is performance-

optimized and configurable to sustain high performance of SAP

applications. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications

is a reference platform used for SAP application development and

is updated to optimize performance as SAP applications are updated.

Decrease Deployment TimeMinimize the time and effort to transition to S/4HANA and deploy

SAP systems with a unified solution that includes automated

application installation, public cloud platform images, aids to work

more easily in a Linux environment, and superior OS support.

Learn the Technology – Certify Your Learning

SUSE training and certification is transforming learners into

professionals through powerful courses that unlock opportunities

in technology.

TrainingImprove your skills (or the skills of your team) with our hands-on,

role-based training for IT professionals and developers. Master

key tasks for SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server, SUSE® OpenStack

Cloud, SUSE® Enterprise Storage, SUSE® Manager, SUSE® Linux

Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, and more.

CertificationSUSE Certifications are among the most relevant and useful in

the IT industry. With a SUSE certification, you can easily show

current employers your skills progression or impress a potential

employer with your practical abilities with Linux as an operating

system and SUSE Linux Enterprise as a distribution family.

SUSE Currently offers the Following Certifications:

All SUSE certification exams are available via remote proctoring.

You can take the exam from your home at a date and time of

your choosing.

Interested in SUSE Training & Certification? Take a look at https://www.suse.com/services/training/ to find a

Training Schedule and a Training Partner.

Overview IT services provider GESIS, Gesellschaft für Informationssysteme mit beschränkter Haftung, offers network, data center and SAP application services, principally for the steel industry. Based in Salzgitter, Germany, the company employs 190 people.

GESIS is part of Salzgitter Group, a major steel producer with approximately 25,000 employees and annual sales of €10 billion. The group consists of more than 200

subsidiaries, and GESIS provides IT ser vices to almost all of the Salzgitter companies.

ChallengeThe general economic situation in the steel industry is tough and characterized by fierce competition. To preserve profitability and offer the lowest possible costs, Salzgitter group constantly seeks ways to cut its operating costs, and optimize production schedules and manufacturing processes. IT services are no exception, and GESIS is under pressure to squeeze its own operating costs and deliver reductions to the group, even as service levels and quality standards improve.

Thomas Lowin, Head of the Server Opera tions Team at GESIS, said, “While other companies can simply halt production lines, this is not possible with an integrated steel mill. To support their 24/7 production, our clients depend on the continuous availability and robust service of our IT systems. Every minute of unplanned downtime would cost them thousands of Euros and jeopardize complex production schedules of diverse steel products.”

GESISGESIS responded to economic pressures on its parent company by migrating from a proprietary RISC platform to SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server on cost-efficient commodity x86 hardware. With SUSE Manager, the company simplified and accelerated system administration and reduced time spent on installing updates by 75 percent. The Linux servers support 24/7 operations, with downtime during updates cut by 83 percent.

Case StudyServer

GESIS at a Glance:GESIS, Gesellschaft für Informationssysteme mit beschränkter Haftung, is an IT service provider to the steel industry. Parent company Salzgitter Group achieves sales of ¤10 billion and employs 25,000 people.

Industry and Location

Manufacturing, Salzgitter, Germany

Product and Services

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP

Applications SUSE Manager

Results

+ Reduced downtime during system updates by 83 percent

+ Shortened the time it takes to patch systems by 75 percent

+ Cut IT hardware and operating costs considerably

“Our SUSE Linux Enterprise Server landscape is remarkably stable, reliable and productive, helping us meet our business requirements. The combination of VMware virtualization and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has improved cost-efficiency, and the solution is a huge business success for us.”

THOMAS LOWIN

Head of the Server Operations TeamGESIS

20

Server Case StudyGESIS

Solution BETTER RELIABILITY WITH SUSE

GESIS was running large, proprietary RISC servers. To provide the necessary processing throughput, GESIS used dedi cated physical servers packed with memory.

Nicolas Otten, Engineer at GESIS, said, “Many years ago, we had outsourced our server operations. To reduce overall costs and regain more control over our systems, we wanted to move server operations back inhouse. To best benefit from this reorganization, we looked to host our applications on the most efficient platform.”

GESIS looked at different architectures and operating systems, and selected SUSE Linux Enterprise Server over alternative ser ver technologies for missioncritical work loads. Andreas Zigann, System Admin istrator SAP Basis, said, “We came to the conclusion that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is easier to manage and that 24/7 availability is easier to achieve. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server requires fewer restarts and maintains its performance over time. In our case, based on previous experience, we also felt that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server was the more robust option.”

OPTIMIZED WORKLOAD DISTRIBUTION

FOR COST-EFFICIENT OPERATIONS

To move operations back inhouse, GESIS created a new department and the team implemented a fully virtualized environment with 14 physical servers running VMware vSphere virtualization software. The virtual server platform hosts missioncritical business systems such as SAP ERP applications running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, and general infrastructure services running on Microsoft Windows Server.

Andreas Zigann said, “When we evaluated different Linux systems, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server had the best support for SAP ERP and other software. Close collaboration between SAP and SUSE over many years guarantees compatibility, which helps us to provide a reliable service to our clients.”

GESIS runs more than 200 virtual instan ces of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, of which around two thirds host SAP software. The company uses SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for its SAP applications and associated databases, as well as additional general business software. GESIS also runs about 20 dedicated physical servers with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for specific workloads not suitable for virtualization.

Andreas Zigann said, “We had no issues mi grating our large SAP ERP applications from a UNIX operating system to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applica tions. The standard SAP tools worked seamlessly on our new SUSE Linux En terprise Server landscape.”

Nicolas Otten added, “We have a few databases of about 3 TB and we use up to 24 processors for our large database servers with 192 GB of memory—SUSE Linux Enterprise Server can handle this scale easily, and the servers run reliably, delivering excellent performance.”

To simplify system administration and boost productivity, GESIS deployed SUSE Manager. This approach enabled GESIS to replace selfdeveloped scripts with the standard SUSE Manager solution, and gain a better overview of its IT operations with a greater level of detail.

Thomas Lowin said, “SUSE Manager simplifies daytoday work for our system administrators. Today, we have a central management solution that stores all relevant configuration data, so we always know exactly which patches are installed on which servers, and which of our Linux in stances need to be updated.”

21www.suse.com

Results With the new environment in place, improved server performance has helped GESIS to consolidate systems yet further. For example, the largest SAP ERP application that formerly ran on ten application ser vers now runs on just one, in a highavailability configuration managed through VMware virtualization.

Thomas Lowin said, “With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, the basic administration workload is much lower. We have been able to cut downtime for security updates from three hours to just 30 minutes, an 83 percent reduction, supporting our objective of roundtheclock availability.”

Nicolas Otten said, “SUSE Linux Enterprise Server manages its resources very efficiently. Previously we rebooted our servers at least once a month to ensure optimal performance, and this is no longer required with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Before we implemented SUSE Manager, we had to patch every single server individually. Now, we have a userfriendly interface that tells us which of our servers need patches most urgently, making our lives much easier and server updates 75 percent faster.”

While GESIS evaluated release upgrades in the past extensively, the new SUSE Mana ger makes even release updates simple

and nondisruptive, enabling the company to keep its servers on the latest release and enjoy the benefits of new functionality.

Thomas Lowin said, “We are very satisfied with our migration to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Our SUSE Linux Enterprise Server landscape is remarkably stable, reliable and productive, helping us meet our business requirements. The combination of VMware virtualization and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has improved costefficiency, and the solution is a huge business success for us.”

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LEARN MORE AT:www.suse.com/dataexplosion

Overview The Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology (GMI) was founded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences to promote research excellence. It is one of only a few institutes worldwide that focuses on basic plant research. Part of the Vienna Biocenter and located within the purpose-designed Life Sciences Center Vienna building, the GMI provides a modern, international working environment with some 130 staff from 37 countries.

ChallengeDedicated to advancing our understanding of plants, researchers at the GMI investigate

everything from developmental biology to population genetics. To attract the bright-est talent in the field, the GMI aims to har ness the latest technologies to assist scientists in their research.

Dr. Borries Luberacki, Head of HPC Opera-tions at the GMI, begins: “New approaches like next-generation sequencing enable scientists to dig into plant DNA quickly and more cheaply than traditional meth-ods—resulting in a rapid growth of data.”

In addition, advances in medical and bio-logical imaging technology mean that re-searchers at the GMI need to process more data than ever before.

Dr. Borries Luberacki comments: “Today, many researchers want quick access to HPC resources to analyze large, complex data sets. But with more scientists eager to analyze more data with new, modern computational tools, it was becoming in-creasingly difficult for our small team to prioritize and manage it all.”

SolutionTo give scientists a faster and more flex-ible way to access the computing re-sources they need, the GMI decided to deploy SUSE OpenStack Cloud, an enter-prise-ready private cloud platform. The underlying OpenStack open source soft-ware controls pools of compute, storage

Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant BiologyTo push the boundaries of knowledge, scientists at the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology need access to the latest computational tools and high-performance computing (HPC) resources to analyze huge volumes of data. With SUSE® OpenStack Cloud, the institute can provide scientists with computing resources in a private cloud within minutes. Today, scientists can deploy cutting-edge applications and tools to run analyzes as and when needed to gain new insights.

Success StoryCloud Computing

Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology at a Glance:Founded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences to promote research excellence, the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology is the only international center for basic plant research in Austria.


Research, Vienna, Austria

Products and Services

SUSE OpenStack Cloud

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

Results

+ Supports cutting-edge scientific research inplant biology, helping to foster innovation

+ Gives scientists quicker and easier accessto the latest computational tools and high- performance computing resources

+ Enables deployment of virtual machines ina private cloud in just 10 minutes

+ Reduces time spent on provisioning and managing IT services

“Now, when scientists want computing resources to analyze next-generation sequencing and biological imaging data sets with the latest computational tools, they can get started themselves without delay. Not only does this support scientific experimentation and innovation, it also greatly reduces the HPC team’s workload.”

DR. BORRIES LUBERACKI

Head of HPC OperationsGregor Mendel Institute of

Molecular Plant Biology

268-002607-001 | 04/17 | © 2017 SUSE LLC. All rights reserved. SUSE and the SUSE logo are registered trademarks of SUSE LLC in the

United States and other countries. All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

and networking resources, all managed through a single dashboard.

Dr. Borries Luberacki notes: “Since our HPC cluster runs SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as the operating system, SUSE OpenStack Cloud was the natural choice to expand our computing capabilities. We wanted an enterprise solution from a ven-dor we could trust and, having partnered with SUSE for many years, we knew that we could rely on them for support.”

Working with the SUSE team, the GMI im-plemented SUSE OpenStack Cloud along-side its HPC cluster. Dr. Borries Luberacki says, “The SUSE team was very helpful throughout the implementation, particu-larly when we ran into hardware complexi-ties. Whenever we have any questions, we can get help from SUSE right away.”

With SUSE OpenStack Cloud, the GMI established a software-defined data cen-ter and can quickly deploy virtual ma-chines (VMs) in a private cloud close to the institute’s HPC cluster. The GMI uses the technology to provide fast, flexible Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offer-ings directly to scientists.

Results The simple installation process of SUSE OpenStack Cloud has helped GMI to iter-ate rapidly and adjust the configuration to facilitate integration with its existing HPC cluster.

Dr. Borries Luberacki remarks: “When sci-entists wanted to try out a new analytics application in the past, it would take us weeks, sometimes months, to set up the software stack on the HPC cluster. Because

it took so long, we’d often find that by the time we’d finished setting up the solution, it was no longer needed.

“With SUSE OpenStack Cloud, we can provide scientists with their own VMs in our private cloud in as little as 10 minutes, enabling them to deploy the scientific workflows themselves, as and when they want. This self-service model means that scientists have greater control, flexibility and agility over how and when they use HPC to support their research.”

Thanks to the platform’s easy-to-navigate graphical interface, scientists can quickly and easily launch VMs to deploy their workloads without involving the HPC team.

Dr. Borries Luberacki comments: “Now, when scientists want computing resources to analyze next-generation sequencing and biological imaging data sets with the latest computational tools, they can get started themselves without delay. Not only does this support scientific experimenta-tion and innovation, it also greatly reduces the HPC team’s workload. With scientists able to deploy scientific workflows them-selves, we only have to provide the basic infrastructure. They can test and evaluate tools independently, and only turn to us when they need additional support.”

He concludes: “We’re already planning to implement SUSE OpenStack Cloud 7 to take advantage of the latest Container-as-a-Service capabilities. Containers make sharing complete applications including all necessary dependencies much easier. Enabling our scientists to take full advan-tage of new computational tools will fur-ther support cutting-edge research.”

“With SUSE OpenStack Cloud, we can provide scientists with their own virtual machines in our

private cloud in as little as 10 minutes, enabling them to deploy the scientific workflows themselves,

as and when they want.”

DR. BORRIES LUBERACKI

Head of HPC OperationsGregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology

Contact your local SUSE Solutions Provider, or call SUSE at:

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1 801 861 4500 Worldwide

SUSE

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90409 Nuremberg

Germany

www.suse.com

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Overview Located in the Netherlands, Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (University of the Arts Utrecht, HKU) offers prepara-tory courses and both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in fine art, design, media, games, music, theatre and arts management. With more than 3,900 stu-dents, HKU is one of the largest art and culture-oriented educational institutions in Europe.

ChallengeAt HKU, where students create, store and share growing amounts of digital media, the rising number of higher-resolution files has significantly accelerated the growth in data storage requirements. Adding in a decentralized, multi-site infrastructure with disconnected islands of storage pro-vided all the ingredients for a significant IT challenge.

Emile Bijk, Head of Network and Informa-tion Systems at HKU, said: “We wanted to consolidate our existing infrastructure to

make it more robust, more scalable, and easier to manage. Several isolated stor-age systems each served the needs of multiple application servers, creating un-helpful dependencies. For example, if we needed to take a storage system down for maintenance or to increase its capacity, the hosted applications would also suffer downtime.”

By adopting a single, centralized storage environment—clustered for high availabil-ity—HKU aimed to increase performance and reduce downtime. This in turn would help students make the most of their time at HKU and increase the university’s at-tractiveness to new applicants.

SolutionAs a long-term user of SUSE® Linux Enter-prise Server and enthusiast for open source solutions, HKU decided to trial SUSE En ter-prise Storage, a software-defined storage solution powered by Ceph technology.

“Ceph is designed to provide extreme scalability and resilience at relatively low TCO, which made it a great fit with our objectives,” said Emile Bijk. “Choosing SUSE’s implementation of Ceph gave us the assurance of enterprise-class support. Centralization meant that we were effec-tively creating a single point of failure for storage, so of course it was vital to ensure this high level of protection and support.”

HKUAs resolutions and frame rates rise, HKU’s students need to store and share increasing quantities of multimedia data. The university’s existing fragmented, multi-site storage infrastructure could no longer meet these growing demands. By deploying a four-node SUSE Enterprise Storage™ cluster—which will soon stretch across two locations for added resilience— HKU has gained a robust, high-performance backbone for file and block storage that offers exceptional scalability combined with low total cost of ownership.

Success StorySUSE Enterprise Storage

“As our storage needs grow, it’s quick and easy to extend the SUSE Enterprise Storage cluster.”

EMILE BIJK

Head of Network and Information SystemsHogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (HKU)

HKU at a Glance:HKU is a liberal-arts university in the Netherlands offering preparatory courses, bachelor and master programs and research degrees in fine art, design, media, games, music, theatre and arts management.


Education, the Netherlands


SUSE Enterprise Storage


Results

+ Removed barriers to storage scalability, supporting growing data and student numbers

+ Eliminated downtime associated with maintenance, raising user productivity

+ Freed up funds by reducing total cost of ownership for storage

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is a trademark of SUSE LLC in the United States and other countries. All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

HKU worked with SUSE to design and de-ploy a three-node cluster of SUSE Enter prise Storage running on Supermicro hard ware. Following a three-month test phase, the university moved into production, adding a fourth node for greater capacity and per-formance. The SUSE Enterprise Storage cluster now hosts practically all file and block storage for HKU, including the KVM images for 25 virtualized servers.

“We introduced SUSE Enterprise Storage at the same time as we were consolidating three locations into one, and the solution also simplified the migration,” said Emile Bijk. “We now have a resilient, scalable, cost- efficient storage solution that provides us with a firm foundation for future growth.”

SUSE Enterprise Storage gives HKU a plat-form that can scale across multiple loca-tions for added resilience. The university has invested in a fast network connection to a backup data center, and will soon add two nodes there.

“It’s easy to add nodes to a SUSE Enter-prise Storage cluster, even in other loca-tions,” said Emile Bijk. “As our users become increasingly dependent on their digital as-sets, it’s great that we can keep their data available even if we lose power at our pri-mary site.”

Results SUSE Enterprise Storage has given HKU a robust and highly scalable backbone for storing and distributing its most im-por tant data.

“As our storage needs grow, it’s quick

and easy to extend the SUSE Enterprise

Storage cluster by adding disk capacity

to existing nodes or by setting up entirely

new nodes,” said Emile Bijk. “We’re also

keen to explore using built-in enterprise

storage features such as snapshots, thin-

provisioning and compression.”

HKU has seen a significant reduction in

the time and effort dedicated to man-

aging data storage. Previously, repairing

or upgrading a storage system implied

downtime for users. The clustered nature

of SUSE Enterprise Storage means HKU

can perform any required maintenance on

any individual node without downtime: ap-

plications and users are automatically redi-

rected to one of the remaining live nodes.

“Day-to-day administration is much eas-

ier with SUSE Enterprise Storage, as we

can complete regular maintenance work

without interrupting students or teaching

staff,” said Emile Bijk. “We also no longer

need to work evenings or weekends, so

our technicians are much happier!

“Although there are storage solutions with

lower acquisition costs, in our experience

SUSE Enterprise Storage offers much

lower TCO, freeing up funds for other ac-

tivities. Not only have we cut administra-

tion time and effort, but also the solution

enables us to practically eliminate down-

time, which represents a huge cost saving

and is vital for our students’ productivity

and satisfaction.”

“In our experience, SUSE Enterprise Storage offers much lower TCO. Not only have we cut administration

time and effort, but also the solution enables us to practically eliminate downtime.”

EMILE BIJK

Head of Network and Information SystemsHogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (HKU)


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Overview Throughout its facilities located across Bangladesh, India and Indonesia, Pearl Global Industries manufactures top-qual-ity women’s, men’s and kids’ fashion for leading brands such as Ann Taylor, Banana Republic and Ralph Lauren. The company employs up to 10,000 people across its manufacturing facilities in South Asia, and handles a wide range of manufacturing techniques for its clients, including needle-work, dyeing, and smocking.

Challenge

INFRASTRUCTURE TWO SIZES TOO SMALL

Each day, Pearl Global Industries aims to meet its goal of delivering a wide range of cost-effective apparel-sourcing solutions and producing the freshest fashion for its clients. To successfully and efficiently achieve this, the manufacturer must ef-fectively manage operations with exter-nal suppliers and distribution centers, and carefully negotiate production quantity and delivery relationships. These activities

require a stable IT infrastructure able to process large volumes of core data. As the company grew, it discovered that its exist-ing systems were simply no longer up to the task.

Subodh Kumar Patro, DGM IT—IDC & SAP Infrastructure at Pearl Global Industries, said: “For approximately seven years we had been running HP-UX on HP Itanium servers. Of course, when we initially in-vested in this infrastructure we didn’t ex-pect to experience the level of business growth that we see today. So, as we grew, it became clear that we needed to refresh our IT architecture, especially as our exist-ing technology was becoming unable to efficiently process higher workloads.

“Doing nothing to improve our architec-ture would have risked the stability of our systems, which, in turn, could have hindered the services we provide for our clients. This is because our HP Itanium servers were near end-of-life, which also meant that finding people with the skills in India to support our systems was becom-ing increasingly difficult. This could have placed us in an uncomfortable position if we had encountered significant problems.

“With the performance of our systems decreasing, our sales, inventory and pur-chasing reports were becoming much slower—making it harder for executive decisions to be made quickly. This issue

Pearl Global IndustriesA period of rapid growth placed strain on the IT infrastructure supporting Pearl Global Industries’ mission-critical systems. To drive greater agility and establish a robust roadmap for future expansion, the manufacturer upgraded its SAP applications and migrated to the widely supported, highly flexible SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications operating system, running on Hitachi Blade 500 servers—enabling further expansion.

Case StudyServer

“With SUSE software, Pearl Global Industries is free to innovate and benefit from participating in the open source Linux community.”

SUBODH KUMAR PATRO

DGM IT—IDC & SAP InfrastructurePearl Global Industries

Pearl Global Industries at a Glance:Operating across South Asia, Pearl Global Industries is among India’s largest garment exporters, and serves some of the world’s most renowned fashion brands.


Manufacturing, India

Product and Services

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP

Applications

Results

+ Cuts the time taken to produce key reports from 45 to 5 minutes, helping to drive quicker executive decisions even during busy accounting periods.

+ Elevates performance levels by 20% and ensures consistent uptime

+ Automates the task of calibrating system configurations, giving staff more time to dedicate to value-add activities

+ Helps IT staff deliver more reliable, better tested solutions by providing them with the flexibility to easily create and manage testing environments

28

Server Case StudyPearl Global Industries

was becoming particularly acute in the run-up to the auditing period in our finan-cial calendar.”

At Pearl Global Industries, every moment counts: manufacturing, distribution and delivery processes must be completed within strict timeframes agreed in con-tracts with clients. If there are any delays, the company runs the risk of losing cus-tom and damaging its strong reputation for reliable execution.

“In addition to the performance and sup-port issues we faced, we were also ex-periencing compatibility issues between HP-UX and our Oracle database, as well as with HP-UX and SAP ECC,” said Subodh Kumar Patro. “We use SAP technology to run mission-critical applications such as billing and order tracking, and to monitor the flow of materials and goods across our business. We store the data for these SAP applications in our Oracle database.

“We began to find that our HP-UX deploy-ment was not ideally suited to support SAP applications, and this was making life more difficult for our IT department, who were keen to realize the benefits of up-grading our SAP platform.”

Pearl Global Industries explored ways to grow its architecture to meet its needs with its existing vendor, but was disheart-ened by the limited options on offer.

Subodh Kumar Patro said: “We felt locked into our legacy system and cut off from the innovative world of more flexible plat-forms such as Linux and x86. This vendor lock-in left us unable to tailor our architec-ture to precisely match the needs of our systems for the best price, and obstructed us from planning ahead to adapt our sys-tems to meet future growth.”

Solution

NEW SOLUTIONS FOR A SEASON OF SUCCESS

Pearl Global Industries decided to replace its HP Itanium servers with five Hitachi Compute Blade 500 servers with x86 pro-cessors. At the same time, the company migrated from HP-UX to the open source, widely supported SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications operating system.

Subodh Kumar Patro said, “When decid-ing which Linux distribution to implement, we compared Red Hat offerings with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. It was clear that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server was bet-ter suited for our company, thanks to the high degree of compatibility between the operating system and the SAP solutions. Indeed, the strong partnership between SUSE and SAP gave us great confidence in the solution.

“We chose to run our SAP ERP environment on a 5-node Hitachi Compute Blade 500 because it offers unparalleled virtualization capabilities and has the performance and capacity to support our business growth. The fact that the Hitachi servers use x86 processors was another reason we opted for the hardware; we knew it was time to break away from being locked into a closed, proprietary architecture.”

On two of its five blade servers, Pearl Global Industries runs two instances of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, supporting its Oracle Database landscape and the SAP ERP Central Component. The remaining three blades are virtualized us-ing VMware ESX Server, hosting multiple virtual instances of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications to support Pearl Global Industries’ SAP application servers. Also, running in this virtualized environment are data backup and disaster recovery systems.

“During the implementation process, we took the opportunity to upgrade to SAP Enhancement Package 7 for SAP ERP 6.0, which lays the groundwork for future upgrades of SAP products,” said Subodh Kumar Patro. “We had wanted to do this with our previous architecture, but were limited by compatibility issues.”

GETTING THE PERFECT FIT

For Pearl Global Industries, migrating to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications was a smooth and success-ful process and the company was quick to take advantage of the operating system to optimize business agility.

Subodh Kumar Patro said: “We were very impressed with the seamlessness of the mi-gration process to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications; we experi-enced no downtime, implemented some elements ahead of time, and completed the whole project on schedule. Once we had implemented the solution completely, there were no issues and we got it up and running very smoothly.

“Once installed, we quickly got to work exploring the features of the system, such as the Page Cache Management option, which helps optimize the performance of our SAP software.”

Pearl Global Industries uses the Page Cache Management option in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications to ensure high performance when working with large SAP workloads. Normally, the Linux kernel frees up rarely accessed ap-plication memory pages and uses them as a general-purpose cache to improve overall system performance. As many SAP applications require rapid access to data, potentially including data that is accessed relatively infrequently, this can cause un-acceptable delays as the system needs

29www.suse.com

to keep going back to disk and reloading the cached-out memory pages. With the SUSE Page Cache Management option in place, the Linux kernel is limited in the amount of cache memory it can use and application memory is prioritized, helping to keep response times as fast as possible for SAP users and applications.

Results

A WHOLE WARDROBE OF OPPORTUNITY

Having refreshed its IT infrastructure with Hitachi Compute servers and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, Pearl Global Industries has a reliable, high-performance platform for SAP ERP and can more easily fine-tune its architecture to meet the changing needs of the busi-ness as it grows.

Subodh Kumar Patro said: “Moving to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Ap-pli cations has enabled us to achieve what we set out to do: to break away from be-ing locked into proprietary technology that limits our ability to grow. With SUSE software, Pearl Global Industries is free to innovate and benefit from participating in the open source Linux community.

“Being part of this community also means that we have wider access to support than ever before, which improves our resilience against unforeseen problems and makes any issues that may arise much easier and more cost-effective to resolve. With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, we have more control over our architecture and the ability to run on the hardware of our choice. We can run multiple logical partitions on our Hitachi hardware supporting different operating systems harmoniously and efficiently.”

The close partnership between SAP and SUSE has empowered Pearl Global In dus-tries to overcome its previous compatibil-ity issues.

“We no longer experience compatibility issues,” said Subodh Kumar Patro. “As the name suggests, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is fully opti-mized for SAP workloads, helping us to en-sure strong uptime and high performance for our core planning, management and reporting systems.”

SPOTTING TRENDS FASTER

After establishing a high-performance, flexible solution with SUSE Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, Pearl Global Industries has slashed the time taken to produce critical sales, auditing and inven-tory reports.

“Our reporting is so much faster than be-fore,” said Subodh Kumar Patro. “Reports that used to take 45 minutes now take less than five minutes. Quicker reporting provides our business with a great advan-tage: with faster access to data we can stay ahead of the curve with our buying and logistics co-ordination. What’s more, having accelerated overall system perfor-mance by 20 percent, we no longer ex-perience bottlenecks in the run-up to the auditing period.

“With this capability, we can stay competi-tive and ensure that we always have the best quality materials at the best price so we can produce and deliver excellent fash-ion to our clients on time, every time.”

SAVING TIME, ADDING VALUE

Subodh Kumar Patro said: “Not only have we saved time by speeding up reporting,

we have also cut the time required to maintain and manage our architecture.

“Previously our IT teams would have to set kernel parameters for each partition and component manually; this would some-times take up to ten hours, because it was necessary to reboot the system after each change to any parameter. Now, it takes just over one hour for our staff to change the parameters of partitions and requires only one reboot to finalize any changes. All the time that our IT staff used to dedicate to changing the parameters of partitions can now be channeled into activities that add value to Pearl Global Industries, such as testing and refining new SAP functionality for our business users.”

As SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications makes creating and manag-ing environments easy, IT staff at Pearl Global Industries can quickly set up new virtual servers, enabling them to thor-oughly test updates, patches and new functionality before they are rolled out. This enables the IT team to minimize dis-ruption to services by ensuring that soft-ware is always precisely calibrated for its systems and users.

Subodh Kumar Patro said: “SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications has provided us with a clear roadmap for the future; it is the first and most important step towards embracing the SAP HANA in-memory database, which we intend to adopt in coming years. Thanks to SUSE, we are better placed to meet the future needs of our clients, and have the tools to grow and expand our business.”

http://www.suse.com

OverviewIn 1977, Jake Burton Carpenter founded Burton Snowboards out of his Vermont barn. Since then, Burton has fueled the growth of snowboarding worldwide through its groundbreaking product lines, its team of top snowboarders and its grassroots efforts to get the sport accepted at resorts. In 1996, Burton began growing its family of brands to include boardsports and apparel brands. Privately held and owned by Jake, Burton’s headquarters are in Burlington, Vermont with offices in Cali fornia, Austria, Japan and Aus tralia. For more information, visit: www.burton.com

ChallengeAs a dynamic global enterprise, Burton operates 24/7 and requires the flexibility to react quickly to changes in the marketplace. The IT department, in particular, needs to provide consistent uptime and to be able to adapt to changing business needs.

The company’s previous HPUX operat ing platform required expensive hard ware and timeconsuming administration. Fre quent

downtime was also an issue. While preparing for an upgrade of its SAP and Ora cle applications, the company began evaluating a move to Linux.

SolutionAfter determining that a UNIX upgrade would be costprohibitive, Burton evaluated several Linux distributions. The company selected SUSE Linux Enterprise Ser ver as a stable, reliable platform for its SAP and Oracle environment.

“It was important for us to have a Linux platform that is certified by SAP, and that was one of the compelling factors that led us to choose SUSE Linux Enter prise Server,” said Bill York, senior Linux administrator at Burton. “While snowboarders are not averse to risk, as a business, we can’t afford to take risks when it comes to our businesscritical systems that need to be available at all times.”

Burton migrated all of its missioncritical systems to Dell servers running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, including SAP ERP, Business Intelligence, CRM, Enter prise Portal, as well as its Oracle appli cations.

“SUSE Linux Enterprise Server can take on a tremendous workload that would drive any other operating platform to its knees,” said York. “Our systems run amazingly fast and are much more available and responsive than they used to be. We also no longer experience any random downtime.”

The Burton CorporationAs the leader in its industry, Burton requires high availability of its mission-critical applications, as well as the flexibility to adapt to changing market needs. Moving from UNIX to SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server has helped the company achieve 99.999 percent uptime and an 80 percent cost reduction, compared to its previous proprietary solution.

Success StoryConsumer Products

The Burton Corporation at a glance:World’s leading manufacturer of board sports equipment and accessories


Consumer Products, United States



Results

+ Reduced overall server-related costsby 80 percent, compared to previous proprietary solution

+ Achieved 99.999 percent uptime+ Reduced power consumption by 30 percent+ Reduced administrative time and costs

by 40 percent

“SUSE Linux Enterprise Server can take on a tremendous workload that would drive any other operating platform to its knees.”

BILL YORK

Senior Linux Administrator The Burton Corporation

www.suse.com

“Since moving to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, our uptime has been insane. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server keeps us nimble and flexible, so we’re better

able to meet the demands of the business and react quickly to a changing marketplace.”

BILL YORK

Senior Linux Administrato The Burton Corporation

To read more customer success stories, visit:www.suse.com/success


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and other countries. All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

The company plans to use the builtin Xen virtualization to reduce its number of physical servers and adapt quickly to changing workloads. The ability to quickly deploy virtual servers will greatly improve the IT staff’s ability to add new applications as needed. Virtual servers will also help the team create better development and testing environments on existing hardware.

“Our entire IT staff made a smooth transition from our UNIX environment, with no need for additional training,” said York. “SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is so much simpler to admin ister through YaST®, and we can now easily keep pace with new security enhancements.”

By moving from HPUX and proprietary hardware to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server running on commodity hardware, Burton has greatly reduced its serverrelated costs which it can now reinvest in other parts of the business. The ability to leverage open source applications is helping the company to further reduce software costs.

The company is also looking into SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Priority Support for SAP Applications, a joint support offering from SAP and SUSE that includes maintenance and support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, as well as SAP applications, with a single support entry point.

“Our experience with SUSE support has been incredible,” said York. “We really take advantage of the SUSE website to get technical information, tips and tricks from the experts, and to check out the Cool Solutions site.”

ResultsMoving its missioncritical SAP and Oracle environments to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has helped Burton reduce overall serverrelated costs by 80 percent compared to its previous proprietary solution. The ability to use commodity servers has not only significantly reduced the company’s hardware costs, but has also reduced its power consumption by 30 percent.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has helped the company reduce administrative time and costs by 40 percent. Simplified administration and consistent uptime has also reduced the time spent supporting users by 25 percent. Overall, the company enjoys 99.999 percent uptime.

“Since moving to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, our uptime has been insane,” said York. “We have some servers that have gone two years before being rebooted. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server keeps us nimble and flexible, so we’re better able to meet the demands of the business and react quickly to a changing marketplace. Particularly in today’s economy, flexibility is critical.”

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