Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions 9.2 - Just Use It

In the 1990s, Nike staked its claim on innovative athletic performance with the iconic marketing campaign Just Do It. Today, many memes exist with a throwback to this vintage slogan with visions of brains and the command of Just Use It. Those of us working on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) think the same thing for optimal performance without worry when it comes to RHEL for SAP Solutions and our 9.2 release. 

The new capabilities in RHEL are dedicated to helping organizations attack the complexity of the hybrid cloud, with features that deliver a more repeatable, scalable, easy to manage Linux estate across the footprint-agnostic, multi/hybrid cloud. This alone makes the life of the administrator easier and more efficient, and lowers the bar to entry for new administrators.

For all organizations, business stability is vital and begins with the operating system. With over 20 years of history, SAP trusts Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as a foundation for their ERP solutions, and the recent release of RHEL provides performance and manageability that mission-critical SAP workloads require. But, users of SAP technologies can’t experience this unless they just use it. With so many enhancements that provide operational efficiencies to make business more manageable and performance-driven, there are many reasons to use RHEL for SAP.

RHEL 9.2 provides enhancements that make the life of a system administrator so much easier with our system roles. Several of these roles are specific to SAP and they automate the preparation of the OS applying SAP’s recommendations and the deployment of the SAP workloads, roles for SAP NetWeaver pre-configuration, SAP general pre-configuration, SAP HANA pre-configuration and installation. There is also a role for setting up HANA system replications, and roles for High Availability (HA) for RHEL HA solutions for SAP HANA as well as system roles for a RHEL HA pacemaker cluster and cluster pre-configuration. All of this goodness means more guided direction for a system administrator's task list.

Historically, IT organizations view upgrades as a challenge, especially given the typical struggles around making the upgrade and rollouts smooth, without rollbacks or outages resulting in potentially-catastrophic production problems. The old approach to upgrades required extensive time and resources, and could still easily result in issues or errors. Our newest release of RHEL addresses these concerns that, alongside  enhanced automation features, lessen the concerns around system upgrades and make roll-outs much faster while limiting the potential for human-introduced errors. 

RHEL 9.2 also takes on the complications of software lifecycles. For example, RHEL has a 10-year lifecycle; RHEL 8 systems will be at the end of maintenance support on May 31st, 2029. This sounds like a date far in the future, but the reality is that IT time moves quickly and that date really isn't that far away. If you’re planning a new deployment, now is the time to look at RHEL 9.2, and start considering migrations for existing workloads. To give you more information on Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s predictable lifecycle we have it outlined on our Red Hat Enterprise Linux Lifecycle page.  

On top of the 10-year lifecycle, we also offer our RHEL for SAP Solutions add-on, which adds a version-locked extended lifecycle option. This allows you to lock into a specific release of RHEL for longer than normal, and still receive critical bug fixes. 

By using RHEL 9.2, Day 1 installation tasks are made easier. As organizations build towards Day 2 tasks, Red Hat Ansible automation capabilities minimize operational worries that would have loomed large in the past. Red Hat Ansible automation saves more time, mitigates human errors and helps projects and activities drive their intended innovation.

Lastly, the power of RHEL means so much more when partners like SAP also believe in our technology and are willing to go above board and discuss it publicly in the market. In February, SAP and Red Hat released a press release announcing that RHEL is “the preferred operating system for net new business for RISE with SAP solution deployments.” If SAP is using it, you should too.

You can learn more about RHEL for SAP, but you can’t benefit from all this goodness in RHEL 9.2 unless you Just Use It!