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: