75 Release Notes #

SUSE Telco Cloud 3.6 is a tightly integrated and comprehensively validated end-to-end solution for addressing the unique challenges of the deployment of infrastructure and cloud-native applications at the edge. Its driving focus is to provide an opinionated, yet highly flexible, highly scalable, and secure platform that spans initial deployment image building, node provisioning and onboarding, application deployment, observability, and lifecycle management.

The solution is designed with the notion that there is no "one-size-fits-all" edge platform due to our customers’ widely varying requirements and expectations. Edge deployments push us to solve, and continually evolve, some of the most challenging problems, including massive scalability, restricted network availability, physical space constraints, new security threats and attack vectors, variations in hardware architecture and system resources, the requirement to deploy and interface with legacy infrastructure and applications, and customer solutions that have extended lifespans.

SUSE Telco Cloud is built on best-of-breed open source software from the ground up, consistent with both our 30-year history in delivering secure, stable, and certified SUSE Linux platforms and our experience in providing highly scalable and feature-rich Kubernetes management with our Rancher portfolio. SUSE Telco Cloud builds on-top of these capabilities to deliver functionality that can address a wide number of market segments, including retail, medical, transportation, logistics, telecommunications, smart manufacturing, and Industrial IoT.

For more information on product support lifecycle updates for SUSE Telco Cloud, see Product Support Lifecycle.

Note

SUSE Telco Cloud is a derivative of SUSE Edge, with additional optimizations and components that enable the platform to address the requirements found in telecommunications use-cases.

These Release Notes are, unless explicitly specified and explained, identical across all architectures, and the most recent version, along with the release notes of all other SUSE products are always available online at https://www.suse.com/releasenotes.

Entries are only listed once, but they can be referenced in several places if they are important and belong to more than one section. Release notes usually only list changes that happened between two subsequent releases. Certain important entries from the release notes of previous product versions may be repeated. To make these entries easier to identify, they contain a note to that effect.

However, repeated entries are provided as a courtesy only. Therefore, if you are skipping one or more releases, check the release notes of the skipped releases also. If you are only reading the release notes of the current release, you could miss important changes that may affect system behavior. SUSE Telco Cloud versions are defined as x.y.z, where 'x' denotes the major version, 'y' denotes the minor, and 'z' denotes the patch version, also known as the "z-stream". SUSE Telco Cloud product lifecycles are defined based around a given minor release, e.g. "3.6", but ship with subsequent patch updates through its lifecycle, e.g. "3.6.1".

Note

SUSE Telco Cloud z-stream releases are tightly integrated and thoroughly tested as a versioned stack. Upgrade of any individual components to a different versions to those listed above is likely to result in system downtime. While it’s possible to run Edge clusters in untested configurations, it is not recommended, and it may take longer to provide resolution through the support channels.

Availability Date: 27th May 2026

Full Support End Date: 27th November 2026

Maintenance Support End Date: 27th May 2028

EOL: 28th May 2028

Summary: SUSE Telco Cloud 3.6.0 is the first release in the SUSE Telco Cloud 3.6 release stream.

75.3.3 Known Issues #

 

Warning

If deploying new clusters, please follow Chapter 64, Building Updated SUSE Linux Micro Images with Kiwi to build fresh images first. This is suggested for management and downstream clusters to ensure the images contain the latest security and bug fixes.

• When deploying via Edge Image Builder, HelmChartConfigs manifests may fail if they are put in the kubernetes/manifests configuration directory. Instead it is recommended to place any HelmChartConfigs in /var/lib/rancher/{rke2/k3s}/server/manifests/ using the EIB os-files interface. See Section 29.1, “Directory structure” for an example. Failure to do this may cause nodes to stay in NotReady state on initial startup, as discussed in #8357 RKE2 issue.

• On RKE2/K3s 1.34 and 1.35 versions, the directory /etc/cni being used to store CNI configurations may not trigger a notification of the files being written there to containerd due to certain conditions related to overlayfs (see the #8356 RKE2 issue). This in turn results in the deployment of RKE2/K3s to get stuck waiting for the CNI to start, and the RKE2/K3s nodes to stay in NotReady state. This can be seen at node level with kubectl describe node <affected_node>:

Conditions:
  Type   Status  LastHeartbeatTime                LastTransitionTime               Reason           Message
  ----   ------  -----------------                ------------------               ------           -------
  Ready  False   Thu, 05 Jun 2025 17:41:28 +0000  Thu, 05 Jun 2025 14:38:16 +0000  KubeletNotReady  container runtime network not ready: NetworkReady=false reason:NetworkPluginNotReady message:Network plugin returns error: cni plugin not initialized

As a workaround, a tmpfs volume can be mounted at the /etc/cni directory before RKE2 starts. It avoids the usage of overlayfs which results in containerd missing notifications and the configs should get rewritten every time the node is restarted and the pods initcontainers run again. If using EIB, this can be a 04-tmpfs-cni.sh script in the custom/scripts directory (as explained here) that looks like:

#!/bin/bash
mkdir -p /etc/cni
mount -t tmpfs -o mode=0700,size=5M tmpfs /etc/cni
echo "tmpfs /etc/cni tmpfs defaults,size=5M,mode=0700 0 0" >> /etc/fstab

• No official documentation or examples to configure SyncE via synce4l and GNSS via gpsd are available at this stage, these topics will be covered by future releases.

• Some container repositories are currently reachable via IPv4 only, for this this reason a local registry on the Management Cluster is required for an IPv6 only downstream cluster.

Unless otherwise stated, these apply to the 3.6.0 release and all subsequent z-stream versions.

Unless otherwise stated, these apply to the 3.6.0 release and all subsequent z-stream versions.

The components mentioned above may be verified using the Software Bill Of Materials (SBOM) data - for example, using cosign as outlined below:

Download the SUSE Telco Cloud Container public key from the SUSE Signing Keys source:

> cat key.pem
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MIICIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAg8AMIICCgKCAgEA7N0S2d8LFKW4WU43bq7Z
IZT537xlKe17OQEpYjNrdtqnSwA0/jLtK83m7bTzfYRK4wty/so0g3BGo+x6yDFt
SVXTPBqnYvabU/j7UKaybJtX3jc4SjaezeBqdi96h6yEslvg4VTZDpy6TFP5ZHxZ
A0fX6m5kU2/RYhGXItoeUmL5hZ+APYgYG4/455NBaZT2yOywJ6+1zRgpR0cRAekI
OZXl51k0ebsGV6ui/NGECO6MB5e3arAhszf8eHDE02FeNJw5cimXkgDh/1Lg3KpO
dvUNm0EPWvnkNYeMCKR+687QG0bXqSVyCbY6+HG/HLkeBWkv6Hn41oeTSLrjYVGa
T3zxPVQM726sami6pgZ5vULyOleQuKBZrlFhFLbFyXqv1/DokUqEppm2Y3xZQv77
fMNogapp0qYz+nE3wSK4UHPd9z+2bq5WEkQSalYxadyuqOzxqZgSoCNoX5iIuWte
Zf1RmHjiEndg/2UgxKUysVnyCpiWoGbalM4dnWE24102050Gj6M4B5fe73hbaRlf
NBqP+97uznnRlSl8FizhXzdzJiVPcRav1tDdRUyDE2XkNRXmGfD3aCmILhB27SOA
Lppkouw849PWBt9kDMvzelUYLpINYpHRi2+/eyhHNlufeyJ7e7d6N9VcvjR/6qWG
64iSkcF2DTW61CN5TrCe0k0CAwEAAQ==
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----

Verify the container image hash, for example using crane:

> crane digest registry.suse.com/edge/3.6/baremetal-operator:0.12.3.0 --platform linux/amd64
sha256:example-digest-placeholder

Note

For multi-arch images it is also necessary to specify a platform when obtaining the digest, e.g --platform linux/amd64 or --platform linux/arm64. Failure to do this will result in an error in the following step (Error: no matching attestations).

Verify with cosign:

> cosign verify-attestation --type spdxjson --key key.pem registry.suse.com/edge/3.6/baremetal-operator@sha256:example-digest-placeholder > /dev/null
#
Verification for registry.suse.com/edge/3.6/baremetal-operator@sha256:example-digest-placeholder --
The following checks were performed on each of these signatures:
  - The cosign claims were validated
  - Existence of the claims in the transparency log was verified offline
  - The signatures were verified against the specified public key

Extract SBOM data as described at the SUSE SBOM documentation:

> cosign verify-attestation --type spdxjson --key key.pem registry.suse.com/edge/3.6/baremetal-operator@sha256:example-digest-placeholder | jq '.payload | @base64d | fromjson | .predicate'

Refer to the Part VIII, “Day 2 Operations” for details around how to upgrade to a new release.

SUSE Telco Cloud is backed by award-winning support from SUSE, an established technology leader with a proven history of delivering enterprise-quality support services. For more information, see https://www.suse.com/lifecycle and the Support Policy page at https://www.suse.com/support/policy.html. If you have any questions about raising a support case, how SUSE classifies severity levels, or the scope of support, please see the Technical Support Handbook at https://www.suse.com/support/handbook/.

SUSE Telco Cloud "3.6" is supported for 24-months of production support, with an initial 6-months of "full support", followed by 18-months of "maintenance support". After these support phases the product reaches "end of life" (EOL) and is no longer supported. More info about the lifecycle phases can be found in the table below:

Unless explicitly stated, all components listed are considered Generally Available (GA), and are covered by SUSE’s standard scope of support. Some components may be listed as "Technology Preview", where SUSE is providing customers with access to early pre-GA features and functionality for evaluation, but are not subject to the standard support policies and are not recommended for production use-cases. SUSE very much welcomes feedback and suggestions on the improvements that can be made to Technology Preview components, but SUSE reserves the right to deprecate a Technology Preview feature before it becomes Generally Available if it doesn’t meet the needs of our customers or doesn’t reach a state of maturity that we require.

Please note that SUSE must occasionally deprecate features or change API specifications. Reasons for feature deprecation or API change could include a feature being updated or replaced by a new implementation, a new feature set, upstream technology is no longer available, or the upstream community has introduced incompatible changes. It is not intended that this will ever happen within a given minor release (x.z), and so all z-stream releases will maintain API compatibility and feature functionality. SUSE will endeavor to provide deprecation warnings with plenty of notice within the release notes, along with workarounds, suggestions, and mitigations to minimize service disruption.

The SUSE Telco Cloud team also welcomes community feedback, where issues can be raised within the respective code repository within https://www.github.com/suse-edge.

This SUSE product includes materials licensed to SUSE under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and various other open source licenses. The GPL requires SUSE to provide the source code that corresponds to the GPL-licensed material, and SUSE conforms to all other open-source license requirements. As such, SUSE makes all source code available, and can generally be found in the SUSE Telco Cloud GitHub repository (https://www.github.com/suse-edge), the SUSE Rancher GitHub repository (https://www.github.com/rancher) for dependent components, and specifically for SUSE Linux Micro, the source code is available for download at https://www.suse.com/download/sle-micro on "Medium 2".

SUSE makes no representations or warranties with regard to the contents or use of this documentation, and specifically disclaims any express or implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose. Further, SUSE reserves the right to revise this publication and to make changes to its content, at any time, without the obligation to notify any person or entity of such revisions or changes.

Further, SUSE makes no representations or warranties with regard to any software, and specifically disclaims any express or implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose. Further, SUSE reserves the right to make changes to any and all parts of SUSE software, at any time, without any obligation to notify any person or entity of such changes.

Any products or technical information provided under this Agreement may be subject to U.S. export controls and the trade laws of other countries. You agree to comply with all export control regulations and to obtain any required licenses or classifications to export, re-export, or import deliverables. You agree not to export or re-export to entities on the current U.S. export exclusion lists or to any embargoed or terrorist countries as specified in U.S. export laws. You agree to not use deliverables for prohibited nuclear, missile, or chemical/biological weaponry end uses. Refer to https://www.suse.com/company/legal/ for more information on exporting SUSE software. SUSE assumes no responsibility for your failure to obtain any necessary export approvals.

Copyright © 2024 SUSE LLC.

This release notes document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC-BY-ND-4.0). You should have received a copy of the license along with this document. If not, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/.

SUSE has intellectual property rights relating to technology embodied in the product that is described in this document. In particular, and without limitation, these intellectual property rights may include one or more of the U.S. patents listed at https://www.suse.com/company/legal/ and one or more additional patents or pending patent applications in the U.S. and other countries.

For SUSE trademarks, see the SUSE Trademark and Service Mark list (https://www.suse.com/company/legal/). All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners. For SUSE brand information and usage requirements, please see the guidelines published at https://brand.suse.com/.