Open Enterprise Server 2018 SP1 will be ready for authorized beta testing in the next 2 to 3 weeks.  Registrations for the same can be done by taking this OES 2018 SP1 Beta Survey.

Unlike OES 2018, where development cycles were largely spent on adapting OES to SLES12 platform, OES 2018 SP1 has a lot of enhancements across the board in File and Print stack, Domain Services for Windows, UI refresh for some web interfaces and tools.

We have also significantly improved the installation, usability, manageability and stability of Cloud Integrated Storage in preparation to removing the Technical Preview tag on it and marking it ready for production deployment.

In this release, there's something to look forward to, for every single OES customer.

So, signup for the beta, download the builds, play around with the beta code and break the product and feed in your inputs before the release.  Together, let's make OES 2018 SP1 the best OES release ever.

Here's a run down on the some of the high level feature updates, not including the numerous bug fixes, enhancements and other improvements that are part of SP1.

• • CIFS / SMB Stack improvements along the lines of improved SPEC compliance and targeted performance improvements.

• • NCP Stack Improvements focused around better multi-factor authentication support. Performance improvement and adding encryption support in NCP are being worked on.

• • Domain Services for Windows Enhancements include scalability and security improvements by virtue of Kerberos stack update and SMB stack update, that adds SMB 2 support.

• • NSS File Stack Improvements including of native 4K disk support, 64 Bit SMS, updated FTP stack, and scalability of NIT and NURM.

• • UI Refresh for some components like iManager, Java Console and NetStorage

• • Cloud Integrated Storage Last, but not the least is the brand new cloud integrated storage tiering capability, which was introduced as a technical preview in OES2018. This has now been polished across the board including install, deployment, management and monitoring and is now ready for production use after your testing and feedback.

• • All the above on top of the latest SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP3

• • Also included is eDirectory 9.1 – the latest version of eDirectory, which enables IDM 4.7 to be deployed on top.

• • BCC : Another change is the inclusion of Micro Focus Business Continuity Clustering as a install pattern in OES. This change is only to simplify the distribution and deployment of BCC and it continues to be a separately licensed and sold product.

• • Alongside OES 2018, the ‘iPrint Add-on for OES 2018’ will also be available - which will allow you to host iPrint Appliance capabilities on OES, if you desire so.

If you have any question or comments, do not hesitate to drop a note to pmadhan@microfocus.com