SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP7 – Your Safe Harbor for Decade-Long IT Investments, Available Today!

SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Service Pack 7 (SP7) family, including the next iteration of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 Service Pack 7 (SLES 15 SP7), is available today.

This release offers a critical ‘safe harbor’ for your long-term IT projects. SP7 consolidates the experience, certification, and validation from its seven previous service packs, delivering an unrivaled lifecycle for a minor release, extending until 2037. Remarkably, it uniquely eliminates the need for even minor OS upgrades, marking a breakthrough for enterprise Linux solutions. This offering fundamentally de-risks and protects your long-term IT investments, ensuring over a decade of operational certainty with SUSE’s renowned security and compliance.
SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP7 is meticulously engineered to deliver unparalleled stability, robust security, and predictable lifecycles for your critical workloads, ensuring long-term continuity and avoiding disruptive upgrades.

This launch also includes, together with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 Service Pack 7, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 Service Pack 7 (SLES for SAP SP7), which is also immediately available. With the same extended lifecycle, it provides a strategic safe harbor for your current SAP® on-premises and cloud deployments. This empowers your enterprise with peace of mind and the necessary time and flexibility to modernize your SAP infrastructure towards cloud-based offerings at your own pace.

Together, these offerings are designed to protect your multi-million dollar IT investments and ensure unwavering stability for all your business-critical workloads, including those running SAP, for decades to come.

SUSE Linux

Why SP7 is the strategic choice for long-term IT projects:

SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP7 directly addresses the common pain points of aligning OS lifecycle with your IT investment plans and projects. As a consolidated and mature release, unlike just released major versions, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP7 is validated and production ready right now  and the larger lifecycle will ensure continuity until 2037.

It addresses key challenges of managing enterprise IT over time, such as eliminating operational expenses and downtime associated with OS upgrades for more than a decade, removing the complexity and risk of revalidating critical applications and hardware associated with even a minor upgrade. By completely removing the associated risk of a premature project end-of-life, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP7 ensures the full value of your hardware, applications, and facilities for more than a decade.

What is new in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP7

Unmatched Longevity & Continuity: Decades Without Disruptive Upgrades

• Longest Support: SP7 offers over 10 years of dependability, with general support until 2031 and Long Term Service Support (LTSS) available until 2037, providing up to 19 years of total support for your IT investments.
• No Forced Minor Upgrades: Unlike other solutions, SP7 specifically eliminates the need for minor OS upgrades. This directly saves on costly revalidation cycles and reduces operational complexity and downtime.
• True Lifecycle Control: Gain predictable and uninterrupted operations, allowing your OS to last as long as your hardware, certifications, and investments.

Pioneering Security: Enhancing First Enterprise Linux Ready for Post-Quantum Cryptography

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has always prioritized security. As the evolution of the first enterprise Linux ready for post-quantum cryptography since SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP6, SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP7 delivers a hardened and future-proof security foundation.

• Post-Quantum Cryptography Ready: SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP7 ensures cryptographic future-proofing.
  • Enhanced with OpenSSL 3.2 for stricter protocol parsing and improved validation for certificates and cryptographic parameters.
  • Adopted by newer versions of curl, OpenSSH, Python, and PostgreSQL.
  • Enhanced TLS 1.3 & QUIC support.
• Zero Trust extended to run-time and data-in-use with Confidential Computing: Strengthened security with Confidential Computing support as both a host and guest on select platforms.
• Support for runtime policy enforcement (SELinux/AppArmor)
• Reinforce Live Patching to minimize maintenance windows: Kernel and key userspace libraries live patching ensure uninterrupted security without disruption to critical workloads. Unique 13 months maintenance commitment for all the kernels allows an annual patching cycle and security policy enforcement.

Compliance: Built-in, Certified, Always-On

• Certified Compliance: Built-in support for top-tier certifications like FIPS 140-3 and Common Criteria EAL4+.
• Regulatory Alignment: Align with critical new regulations such as NIS2 and CRA, minimizing enterprise and personal liability
• Secure Supply Chain: SUSE provides an audited and CC EAL4+ certified secure software supply chain, including a Software Bill of Material (SBOM) generated by certified processes and tools, and participation in a public vulnerability disclosure program. This addresses crucial regulatory requirements and liability concerns.

Streamline operation

SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP7 together with SUSE Multi-Linux Manager 5.1 empowers IT teams with modern automation capabilities, simplifying management and deployment across diverse environments to reduce complexity and human error.

• Ready for modern automation — with Ansible. Full supported Ansible engine to allow managing SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP7 with Ansible.
• Full supported build of OS images and containers based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP7 fully supported on the long term.

Modern Innovation & Hardware Agility

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP7 provides latest hardware support: Enhanced hardware enablement ensures compatibility with the latest platforms and leverages new CPU and GPU capabilities.

• Support for Intel (Birch Stream, Arrow Lake, Granite Rapids-WS), AMD (Zen 5, EPYC “Turin”, MI350, MI300X), and IBM Z16.
• Includes new drivers (Ice, ixgbe, IPU, SR-IOV hybrid DMA) and GPU updates (Navi 4x, Mesa 24.2, DRM).

It also strengthens long-term hardware compatibility through a reinforced SUSE SolidDriver Program, which continues to provide certified, up-to-date hardware compatibility for long-term commitment.

Immutable Linux deployment ready

Leverage Immutable Deployments with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP7: Together with SUSE Linux Micro (and future SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.1) deploy immutable, always-ready systems today across various environments—Kubernetes, cloud, standalone, edge, embedded, or data center—with confidence and long-term enterprise support.

A Safe Harbor for long term development

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP7 offers the perfect platform for reliable developments. Developers always need updated stacks and tool chains, while some enterprise development need a long term supported platform, like Linux container images supported at the long term.

• • Reliable Foundation: SP7 serves as a robust foundation for container development, empowering DevOps teams with a long-term enterprise platform.
  • Inherit Compliance: Build on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Base Container Images, inheriting long-term support, compliance, and certifications.

• Ready to use full supported SUSE Linux Enterprise Base Container image, over SUSE Linux hosts and SUSE Cloud Native offering

• Updated Toolchains & Dev Tools: Improved stability in toolchains and programming languages empowers your developers today to sustain your IT strategy tomorrow.
  • Features GCC 14, Python 3.13, PHP 8.3, Node.js 22, OpenJDK 21 (default), OpenJDK 17 & 11 (legacy), and the latest Go and Rust versions.

Protect Your Strategic IT Investments for the Long Haul. SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP7 is built to protect your workloads, budgets, and IT timelines. It maximizes IT investment lifespan, significantly reduces operational costs and risks, and allows you to retain strategic control on your terms.

SUSE isn’t just ready for the next upgrade – it’s ready for the next decade.

To know more, see “What’s new in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP7” blog.