There is a series of questions I answer over and over again, particularly when current or potential customers are just getting into the planning or investigative stages of using our SUSE Linux Enterprise line of products.

There are a set of authoritative tables that we all refer to in these instances, where for example someone who wants to run a system that has 2 CPU Sockets, 2 Cores in each socket and 16GB or RAM would typically ask me if that’s supported in the SLES product, and what the limits are.

If I don’t know off the top of my head, I typically refer to the Tech Specs pages, where I can find the Kernel Limits table.

kernel_limits.jpg

On this table you can see the various Kernel revisions, the Platform/Architecture and the Maximum values for things like RAM, CPU’s, Swap Space, Processes, Threads and Block Devices.

From there we typically move right into how many files they can have with what file system, what file system is “better” than the other, and the maximum numbers for all file system related items. These are easily found in the File System Features table.

file_system_features.jpg

From this table you can get just about anything you need about file systems features and limitations. I find it really helps to pre-load up an email with links for these tables (and others I’ll cover) so you can send that to the technical contact when you start to discuss such features, very helpful.

In the next installment, I’ll cover how to find out what packages are included in our various distribution versions and at what levels support exists for those packages.

Enjoy,

RossB