Secure, stable, confident: the foundation of the S/4 transformation

The switch to S/4 is now a necessity. Current surveys illustrate the time pressure: while around 40% of companies have already completed the switch by the end of 2025, a further 28% are aiming for completion immediately before the 2027 deadline. However, this modernization of legacy systems such as ECC 6.0 to agile platforms faces hurdles such as high complexity in deployment, security issues and resilience requirements.

To overcome hurdles such as complexity and resilience, SAP offers „Rise with SAP“ - with Suse remaining the only supported Linux and HA solution for the Private Edition. Suse reduces complexity using Ansible automation for the entire SAP landscape, which significantly reduces the risk of human error. Hyperscalers also use Suse best practices in tools such as AWS Launch Wizard, Azure SAP Deployment Automation Framework or Google Cloud Guided Deployment Automation.

The pursuit of zero downtime

In ERP environments, every minute of downtime has a direct financial impact. Suse's HA solutions aim to minimize both planned and unplanned downtime:

Planned maintenance: With Suse Linux Enterprise Live Patching, administrators can update the Linux kernel and libraries such as glibc or openssl without interrupting business-critical applications such as SAP Hana. This allows immediate security fixes without waiting for traditional maintenance windows.

Unplanned events: The next-generation resource agents (HanaSR-angi) provide an optimized code base for Hana scale-up and scale-out scenarios.

Avoidance of split-brain scenarios: To ensure data integrity, Suse integrates its HA cluster directly with the Hana Cockpit to prevent uncoordinated manual takeovers.

To make the move from reactive troubleshooting to proactive management, Suse has introduced Trento, an open source web application for SAP Basis. The solution focuses on several strategic pillars:

Automated detection: Real-time identification of SAP systems and HA components.

Configuration validation: Ensures that Pacemaker clusters comply with current best practices.

Predictive maintenance: Use AI-supported insights to prevent failures by detecting minor problems at an early stage.

Lifecycle management: Full integration with the Suse Multi-Linux Manager.

In the face of evolving threats, Suse is committed to a verify paradigm. SLES for SAP 16 introduces a verifiable software supply chain with reproducible builds and signed software bill of materials (SBOMs). SELinux is enabled by default for SAP workloads. For customers with strict regulatory requirements, Suse Sovereign Premium Support offers digital sovereignty through EU-based personnel. To break vendor lock-ins, Suse offers KVM, an enterprise-class virtualization solution that is integrated into SLES for SAP. This is validated for Hana and application servers and supports massive workloads (e.g. 8 TB RAM on Intel Sapphire Rapids) at a fraction of previous virtualization costs.

Long-term vision

Suse's lifecycle strategy ensures long-term predictability. While SLES for SAP 15 is supported into the 2030s, SLES for SAP 16 offers support for up to 16 years, thus solving the technical „year 2038 problem“, among other things. Suse provides a consistent foundation for hybrid integration models: SLES for SAP for S/4 landscapes and Rancher for SAP for modern, containerized scenarios such as the Edge Integration Cell. (Source: Suse)

Continue to the partner entry: