SUSE Manager - The Linux Manager (a quick look)

“Manage any Linux, anywhere” is the current theme of SUSE Manager. This is the one stop solution to manage a complete Linux estate. Yes, SUSE Manager is a complete lifecycle manager for any Linux distribution. It doesn’t matter which Linux distro is that, it could be Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS or Ubuntu or Oracle Enterprise Linux etc, all could be easily managed using SUSE Manager, whether it is on-premise or on edge or in cloud.  

Uyuni (a fork of Spacewalk, based on SaltStack) is the upstream for SUSE Manager 4 and later releases. "Spacewalk" was used earlier. 

Why SUSE Manager?

SUSE Manager enables to manage complex sets of Linux systems and keep them up-to-date, with automated software management, asset management, system provisioning and many more. SUSE Manager allows to maintain a high level of security while effectively managing system life-cycle requirements.

SUSE Manager which is fondly called as SUMA is a perfect solution to manage a Linux server farm. This offers a single pane of glass view to effectively manage, monitor, patch, audit, deploy and mitigate security vulnerabilities keeping the estate green with in-built automation capabilities which is delivered by Salt modules (can get integrated with other popular infra automation tools such as Ansible and others) across cloud, on-premises and edge.

What are the key features of SUSE Manager?

• Automated System Deployment & Management 

• Patch Management & Automation

• Service Pack Application

• Subscription Management

• Configuration Maintenance

• Compliance Management & Auditing

• Manage Docker/Container Images

• System Monitoring & Reporting

What are the core components that make up the SUSE Manager? 

→ SUSE Manager Server (Salt Master) : The Salt Master is a daemon that runs on the SUSE Manager Server. This is the configuration management server for all the Salt Minions. Inside the Salt Master there is a chunk of code known as "mgr_events".

→ Tomcat : Tomcat reacts to Salt Events which are the results of Salt Minions executing commands issued from the Salt Master. The SUMA Web UI is also implemented in Tomcat.

→ Salt API : The Salt Application Programming Interface (API) serves as a connector between Tomcat and the Salt Master and between the Taskomatic process and the Salt Master.

→ Salt Minion : Client agent, works on commands from Salt Master.

→ ZeroMQ(0MQ) : An Open-Source messaging library designed to connect disparate parts of any distributed systems.

→ Cobbler : Used for bare metal deployment of client OS.

→ Kiwi : Kiwi is a command line tool written in Perl that is used to build Linux OS images in any number of supported formats.

What are the officially supported* clients in SUSE Manager? 

- SLES 15/12 (both traditional & salt clients)

- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP 15, 12 (both traditional & salt clients)

- SLE Micro (only salt clients)

- openSUSE Leap 15 (both traditional & salt clients)

- SUSE Liberty Linux 9, 8, 7 (only salt clients)

- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server ES 8, 7 (only salt clients)

- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, 8, 7 (only salt clients)

- AlmaLinux 9, 8 (only salt clients)

- Amazon Linux 2 (only salt clients)

- CentOS 7 (both traditional & salt clients)

- Debian 12, 11, 10 (only salt clients)

- Oracle Linux 9, 8, 7 (only salt clients)

- Rocky Linux 9, 8 (only salt clients)

- Ubuntu 22.04, 20.04 (only salt clients)

Other important points about SUSE Manager

- SUSE Manager can be either set up or built as an extension while installing SLES15 servers or as part of the post installation. Also offers ISO images which could be used.

- “spacecmd” is the command line interface for interacting with SUSE Manager.

- The default database used in SUSE Manager is “PostgreSQL” which could be either internal or external. 

- “Salt Open” is used for configuration management, remote execution & orchestration inside SUSE Manager. 

- In SUSE Manager 4.1 and later versions, Yomi (yet one more installer) can be used as part of provisioning new clients, as an alternative to AutoYaST. This is a Salt-based installer for SUSE and openSUSE operating systems. 

References: https://documentation.suse.com/suma/4.3/

*at the time of writing