SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Support Notes for HP Integrity Servers

3 Recommendations, Limitations, and Known Issues
This chapter contains recommendations, limitations, and known issues with the use of SLES 11
on HP Integrity servers.
Recommendations
The following recommendations from HP for using SLES 11 on HP Integrity servers should be
observed.
• Review the SLES 11 release notes
HP encourages you to review the Novell Release Notes for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
for the current status on items such as the Reiserfs filesystem at the Novell SLES 11
documentation website:
http://www.novell.com/documentation/sles11/index.html
• Upgrading from earlier SLES versions
The only recommend upgrade method from one SLES distribution to another is to execute
a full cold installation. This is the only upgrade path supported by HP.
• Use of LSI 1068 controller on BL860c, BL870c, or rx2660 servers
If you are upgrading from SLES 10 on an existing BL860c, BL870c, or rx2660 server or
purchasing one of these servers, HP does not recommend the use of the LSI 1068 controller
with SLES 11. There is no remote monitoring support available for the LSI 1068 controller
with SLES 11 so HP recommends the use of any of the other Fibre Channel HBA or Smart
Array controllers.
• Reduce installation time on systems with numerous LUNs (storage)
While the number of LUNs for a running system is virtually unlimited, HP recommends
that you do not have more than 64 LUNs online during the SLES 11 installation to reduce
the time to initialize and scan the devices thus reducing the installation time.
Limitations
The following section describes the limitations of SLES 11 on HP Integrity servers.
• Uncertified RPM packages support
If you add uncertified RPM packages to the operating system (for example, from an open
source development repository), it will not be supported by Novell. Only RPM packages
bundled in supported Linux distributions for HP Integrity servers and official SLES Service
Packs for those distributions are supported by Novell . HP supports only the Linux software
it distributes.
• Systems with a recompiled kernel support
Although you may recompile your kernel to change configuration parameters, HP does not
support systems on which you have recompiled your kernel for any other reason. For
example, for kernel source code changes.
The following are the only supported customizations:
— Modifying configuration options found in /usr/src/
linux-version-versionnumber/configs to set values or make modules static
or dynamically loadable.
— Changing boot parameters found in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/
kernel-parameters.txt (with the kernel-source /rpm).
Recommendations 11