SUSE may not get the headlines, but it's still a major Linux server power. That's why the news that SUSE is enabling its customers to use its SUSE Manager in the public cloud via SUSE's "bring-your-own-subscription" program is a big deal.

SUSE Manager is SUSE's answer to Red Hat's Red Hat Satellite. It's the do-everything administration program for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). SUSE Manager provides complete lifecycle management and monitoring for Linux servers across distributions, hardware architectures, virtual platforms and cloud environments.

Now, this program allows enterprise customers to transfer their existing SUSE Manager subscriptions for use in public clouds provided by SUSE Certified Cloud Service Providers. This includes SLES installations on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Compute Engine and Microsoft Azure.

This way you can move your SLES instances to the cloud with no additional cost and continue to get support directly from SUSE. You can, of course, also use SUSE Manager to simultaneously manage workloads running both in the public cloud and in on-premise, private data centers across multiple locations or branch offices.

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"The flexibility afforded customers by allowing them to provision, manage and update either public cloud or on-premise infrastructures with SUSE Manager is invaluable," said Naji Almahmoud, SUSE's head of global business development in a statement. "They can determine their ideal mix of traditional and public cloud workloads without worrying about growing management costs. And they can continue to rely on their existing SUSE support relationship and high level of service, with no additional cost."

It's that "no additional cost" part, which I think will make SLES happy and keep them from moving to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or Canonical's Ubuntu Server. On top of that though it does enable customers to quickly scale and deploy in the public cloud without building a separate management infrastructure.

Want to give it a try? SUSE customers can transfer existing SUSE Manager subscriptions to AWS, Google Compute Engine and Microsoft Azure through online enrollment.

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