SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10

If you have gone through the SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 review (Aug

2006, p122), you would have perhaps noticed the great integration of

applications which SLED 10 has out of the box. And when we talk about SuSE Linux

Enterprise Server (SLES) 10, the same benefits come to surface quite

prominently.

But this time the integration is not just about good looks and easier usage.

This being a server-class OS, we talk about integrated features such as FailSafe,

virtualization, security and robustness of the OS. The OS was reviewed on an IBM

e-Series Server having two Xeon processors and 1GB RAM. As always, the

installation was based on the YaST installer. During installation, the OS was

able to detect all the hardware in the server. It also recognized a Windows file

system present on the hard disks and asked whether we wanted to resize the

partition for SLES or not. 

After our approval, it automatically resized it and created a ReiserFS

partition for installation of SLES 10. This is an added feature for a Linux

installer. Because traditionally we used some other application such as FIPS

(for FAT32), or parted to do this kind of resizing. The feature has indeed

reduced one step while doing a dual boot installation of a Linux distro with

Windows.

Virtualize SuSE with Xen



The OS was released on 17th July 2006 and has become the first server class
installable Linux distro to have Xen Virtualization Server out of the box. To

install Xen you need to select the 'Virtualization' option. Xen is supposed

to be a great virtualization technology as it doesn't run a virtual machine on

top of the host OS. Rather it just loads a Linux kernel on top of a

virtualization layer where it either uses the same FS of the Host OS or uses a

separate ISO file built from any Linux file system. This technique drastically

reduces the overhead caused by the virtualization middleware. And because of

this very reason Xen is becoming immensely popular.

But the biggest drawback with Xen is its difficult configuration. As there is

no stable GUI front end available for Xen, the user is left with no option

except to go through quite a few manual steps to set up and configure it. But

SuSE solves this problem by providing a YaST plug-in which can setup, configure,

install the guest OS and use the new VM from a single GUI interface. This is a

great boon to those who want to deploy virtualization in their enterprise using

Xen. But there is a catch! While using the YaST plug-in for Xen, we found that

it can only do an installation of SLES 10 on a Xen Virtual Machine. We tried to

deploy FC5 and some other Linux distros but the VM installer failed to recognize

the installation media. We even tried to install the SLED 10 on top of Xen using

the same YaST plug-in, but to our surprise it failed to recognize the

installation media.

With the YaST plug-in of Xen, you can install a virtual instance of SLES 10 inside a running SuSE server

Secure your applications



After the arrival of SELinux, the concept of securing applications has become
hot in the Linux market. But again the problem with SELinux is its CLI (Command

Line Interface) nature and difficult configuration. There are some tools

available to configure SELinux graphically but those are still in their infancy

and lack features. So, to provide an application level policy manager for the

Linux platform, Novell acquired a product called AppArmor, turned it into

OpenSource and included it in the distro. The application has all the features

of an application based policy manager and is completely wizard driven. With

AppArmor, all you need to secure an application, is to run the AppArmor wizard.

Run the application that you want to secure for some time and click on OK.

Other key features



Novell is pushing scalability as the USP for this version of SLES. They have
built the kernel in such a way that it has virtually no limitation while

upgrading hardware. For instance, this version of Linux is running on an SGI

server where they have a single SMP machine with 1024 processors running

parallel. Other key features of the distro include out of box support for OCFS

(Oracle Cluster File System). FailSafe clustering for Xen can be set up

automatically for virtual machines and that too without the need of restarting

the VMs. Moreover, it has the latest, stable kernel (2.6.16) for the OS and for

Xen.

Bottom Line: A very stable distro with cutting edge features for

enterprise server needs. At this price it is one of the most cost efficient

server class OS.