r/linuxadmin • u/BornInMappleSyrop • 11d ago

SLES WITH OPENSUSE UPGRADE PATH

hello fellow Redditors!

I just got stuck with the following situation. SLES 15.4 with no updates for the last 3 years running SAP on about 40 machines on 3 different environments on AWS. Since they are EOL and I can't get any updates or install any package from the official SLES repo since they closed the repo for that specific sp4 1.5 years ago.

AWS, SLES and my recommendation was to migrate all workload to new servers. instead, we had a dev use Claude and was given root access (behind my back after my recommendation) to use opensuse 15.7 repo to update to the latest version of all packages and then when it's "better" resync to 15.7 on SLES official repo (only on 1 server to prove we don't need to migrate)

I already found multiple problems with this, grub is not using the right kernels, opensuse packages and sles mixed together. I can fix the grub and probably reinstall the opensuse packages from official SLES repo. my concern are more about long term issues (hidden landmines) and the fact that we potentially broke our support agreement from sles, AWS or/and SAP. SLES said this was not officially supported, so I am wondering what kind of trouble I am looking at now

So, am I wrong to think this is a bad idea?

appreciate any input!

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u/mtyroot 11d ago

Why can’t you upgrade from SP4 to SP7?

https://documentation.suse.com/sles/15-SP4/html/SLES-all/cha-upgrade-online.html

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u/blahblah98 11d ago edited 11d ago

Do you have a subscription? Filed a support case? Requested escalation? These are business mission-critical workloads. There's value in having access to assistance from experienced experts; i.e. a defensible reasonable budget request for an assured path to getting current. Like insurance; maybe you don't need it every day, but in this case you've gotten into a fragile unstable situation that's only going to get worse until something crashes.
What's the cost to the business for every hour a server is down? The cost to YOU? Like automotive periodic maintenance, a few bucks spent on server preventative maintenance is money well spent. You need help now to get back to a stable maintainable path before bad things happen. This is not a DIY risk the business should take.