SUSE Linux Enterprise Server vs. SUSE Rancher

We use it for every linux service we need to have running. It really works great and is easily manageable with the SUSE Manager, which helps a lot with the updating process. Although it is not stressfull on the CMD itself, it really does simplify things. Besides that, we are really happy with working with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

SUSE Rancher as a management tool becomes useful on a larger scale. Small deployments not so much. If someone also requires Kubernetes capacity or storage, Rancher is an excellent choice. Also, without Kubernetes' skills, it is unlikely that Rancher deployment is going to be a success. Then again if someone else is managing your Kubernetes capacity, setting up the software's capacity will yield greater control. Rancher is not a very integrated solution similar to others in the market.

Incentivized

• Consistently performs well across various CPU architectures.
• It's very well supported both by the parent company, as well as SAP and other third-party companies.
• It is upgradeable across versions. We've performed upgrades from version 10 to 11 and from 11 to 12 without any major issues.

Incentivized

• Public and private cloud infrastructure providers based on K8s CAPI
• REST API that can be used to integrate company services with Rancher
• GUI that is easy to learn and use in daily operations
• Builtin GitOps automation solution based on Fleet project
• It is fully open source

• The support window for service packs after a new SP is released is too short.
• Community engagement is low.
• There are times when supported packages fall too far behind and create compatibility issues with applications. The Open Build Service usually provides a way around this, though.

Incentivized

• No possibility to snapshot Projects. You can snapshot and restore the whole Kubernetes cluster, but not a Project or Namespace. For this, you have to use external tools.
• You cannot detach the Rancher-created Kubernetes clusters from Rancher management.

We've been using this OS for about 8 years in a productive environment. During this time, we have never run into any problems that stopped or impacted our production environment. We have been able to solve any problem we ran into using either common sense, suse documentation or suse support.

Overall it deserves an 8 out of 10. The platform is very easy to use as long as the UI is stable. We have had a few buggy versions in the past. However the CLI is excellent and the platform is simple to manage and maintain. It is easy to deploy and offer for company wide use which increases utilization and ROI.

Incentivized

Support personnel are helpful and fairly fast to bring resolution to non-emergency issues. Patches are created and posted in a timely fashion. We so far have not had any major problems that needed support

The documentation is quite complete and there is a very active community that is willing to collaborate and answer questions for those who are just starting out.

Third party training was fast but mostly unnecessary as we were already Unix trained and Linux familiar

We went straight to SLES when we initially started migrating oracle to hana since at that time, HANA came on a pre-installed server that had to be purchased from an official vendor, and SLES was the only allowed OS. We stuck with SLES after we became certified to do our own installations because so far, SLES was a good fit for us.

Incentivized

We started using SUSE Rancher in the early days and spent a large amount of time getting to know and love it. This was before the days of some of the likes of Amazon Web Services who may now provide a cheaper but less feature-rich alternative to SUSE Rancher, however we have yet to explore this.

Incentivized

The investment for small environments is quite significant. There has to be a compelling case to enhance the areas where SUSE Rancher brings in value to make such a financial leap. There is also a free version to test the value propositions, which will help support the user's buying decisions. More clusters, more volume, more tasks and more complexity in the environment equals more value that Rancher can provide.

Incentivized

We have successfully deployed on physical servers, VMs and in cloud all over the globe from templates of our own design

• Compared to others, use is more stable and scalable; easy to manage.
• The administration tools are very useful in helping the staff performance.
• SLES proved to be a very extendable product, supporting all of our infrastructure.
• The major reason I chose to use the product was the extensive enterprise peripheral support.

Incentivized

• Shortens "Time-to-Market" factor for new business applications or implementing new functionalities. From 1 to 50 microservices-based business applications in 6 years.
• 24/7 availability, generates more money. There are many infrastructure components that are regularly powered-off for maintenance or upgrade, bur we rarely are turning off our downstream Kubernetes clusters where our business applications lives.
• Single Point of Contact with platform maintenance and development Team, eases implementation of new business applications