SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9

Technical Specifications

System Requirements

The following basic system requirements are for SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server 9. For more detailed requirements, please see SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 documentation.

Minimum system requirements for installation

Local installation: 256 MB RAM
SSH-based network graphical installation: 256 MB RAM
VNC-based network installation via FTP: 512 MB RAM

Minimum system requirements for operation

256 MB RAM (512 MB for AMD64 with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP2)
500 MB hard disk space for software
500 MB hard disk space for user data

Recommended system requirements

512 MB to 3 GB RAM, at least 256 MB per CPU
4 GB hard disk space
Network interface (Ethernet or modem)

Supported processor platforms

x86
AMD64
Intel EM64T
Itanium Processor Family
IBM POWER (former IBM iSeries and IBM pSeries systems)
IBM System z (31-bit, 64-bit)
IBM S/390 (31-bit)

Package Descriptions

Here you can find detailed descriptions of all packages included on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server:

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 for x86

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 for AMD64 & Intel EM64T

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 for Intel Itanium Processor Family

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 for IBM POWER

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 for IBM S/390 (31 bit)

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 for IBM zSeries

Kernel Limits

The table below summarizes the various limits which exist in our recent kernels and related utilities.

Platform	x86	Intel® Itanium® Processor Family	AMD64® and Intel® EM64T®	IBM® S/390® (31 bit)	IBM® zSeries®	IBM® POWER™
Kernel related items
CPU bits	32	64	64	32	64	64
max. #CPUs (theoretical/practical)	32/4-32 (128 possible with bigsmp kernel)	128/4-128 (512 possible with some SGI systems)	8/8 (16 with dual-core CPUs, 128 in standard SMP setups)	32/16	64/32	32 (iSeries), 128 (pSeries)/64
max. RAM (theoretical, practical)	64/48 GiB	1 PiB/4 TiB	1 TiB/512 GiB	2/2 GiB	4 TiB/256 GiB	1 PiB/512 GiB
max. swap space	up to 32 * 64 GB
max. user-/kernelspace	3/1 GiB	2 EiB / N/A	512 GiB / N/A	2 / 2 GiB	N/A	2 TiB / N/A
max. #processes	1048576
max. #threads per process	32760
max. size per block device	up to 16 TiB on 32-bit architectures, and up to 8 EiB on 64-bit architectures
Filesystem related items
max. filesystem size	ext2/3: 16 TiB (2⁴⁴ bytes) jfs: 4 PiB (2⁵² bytes) nfs v2: 8 EiB (2⁶³ bytes) nfs v3: 8 EiB (2⁶³ bytes) reiserfs: 16 TiB (2⁴⁴ bytes) xfs: 8 EiB (2⁶³ bytes)
max. file size	ext2/3: 2 TiB (2⁴¹ bytes) jfs: 8 EiB (2⁶³ bytes) nfs v2: 2 GiB (2³¹ bytes) nfs v3: 8 EiB (2⁶³ bytes) reiserfs: 1 EiB (2⁶⁰ bytes), but page cache limits this to 8 TiB on architectures with 32 bit int xfs: 8 EiB (2⁶³ bytes)

Remarks: The max. file size above can be larger than the filesystem's actual size due to usage of sparse blocks. It should also be noted, that unless a filesystem comes with large file support (LFS), the maximum file size on a 32-bit system is 2 GB (2³¹ bytes). Currently all our standard filesystems (incl. ext3 and reiserfs) have LFS, which gives a maximum file size of 2⁶³ bytes in theory. For an indepth description please refer to Large File Support in Linux.

The numbers given in the above table assume that the filesystems are using a 4 KB block size. When using different block sizes, the results are different. But 4 KB reflects the most common standard.

File System Support

In this table "+" means "available/supported", "-" is "unsupported" or "not well implemented".

Feature Group	Feature	Ext 3	JFS	Reiserfs 3.6	XFS
Journaling	Journaling: Data/Metadata	+/+	-/+	-/+	-/+
	Journal-Replay Kernel/Userspace	+/+	-/+	+/-	+/-
	Journal internal/external	+/+	+/+	+/(+)	+/+
Internal Structures	Inode-Allocation-Map	table	B+-tree	unified B*-tree	B+-tree
	Dynamic Inode-Allocation-Map	-	+	+	+
	Block Allocation Map	table	B+-tree	unified B*-tree	B+-trees
	Extents	-	+	-	+
	Inode Inline Data	+ (sym-links<60chars)	+ (except small files)	+	+
	Sparse Files	+	+	- (bad)	+
	Tail Packing	-	-	+	-
	Defrag	+ (unstable)	-	(unnecessary)	+
Resizing	Offline extend/shrink	+/+	+/-	+/+	-/-
	Online extend/shrink	-/-	-/-	+/-	+/-
ACLs, Quotas, ...	Extended Attributes/Posix-ACLs (SUSE)	+/+	+/+	+/+	+/+
	Quotas (SUSE)	+	+	+	+
	Dump/Restore	+	-	-	+
Sizes/Limits	Blocksize(s): (range) default	(1,2,4 KByte) 4KByte	(512Byte-4KByte) 4KByte	(up to 64 KByte) 4KByte	(up to 64 KByte) 4 KByte
	max. FS-size	16TByte	8 EByte	1 EByte	8 EByte
	max. File-size	2 TByte	4 PByte	16 TByte	8 EByte

All filesystems mentioned are working on all platforms; nevertheless, JFS is not recommended to use anymore, "xfs" is not officially supported on s390/zSeries (for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9).

See tech specs for other versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise: