Supportconfig Analysis for SLES: Auto-Tune Your System

Quick one-liner: SLES ships with Supportconfig Analysis (SCA) — a tool that scans your system config and recommends tuning. Two commands, instant optimization report.

🤔 Why This Matters

After you install SLES, there are dozens of kernel parameters, service settings, and best practices that could be tuned for your workload. But how do you know what to change?

SUSE includes a built-in tool called Supportconfig Analysis (SCA) that does exactly this. It reads your system configuration, checks it against SUSE's best practice patterns, and generates an HTML report with specific recommendations.

It's not installed by default, but setup takes two commands.

🔧 Step 1: Install the SCA Packages

sudo zypper install sca-server-report sca-patterns-sle15

The sca-server-report package generates the HTML report. The sca-patterns-sle15 package contains the best practice rules for your SLES version.

Note: Use sca-patterns-sle15 for SLES 15, sca-patterns-sle12 for SLES 12.

🔧 Step 2: Run the Analysis

sudo scatool -s

This collects your system configuration, analyzes it against the SUSE patterns, and generates an HTML report at:

/var/log/nts_XXX.html

The XXX is a timestamp-based identifier.

📊 Step 3: Review the Report

Open the report in your browser:

xdg-open /var/log/nts_*.html

The report is organized into sections:

• System Overview — kernel version, CPU, memory, disk layout
• Recommendations — specific settings to change, with explanations
• Solution Details — links to SUSE documentation for each recommendation

Each recommendation tells you: - What's currently configured - What SUSE recommends - Why the change matters - How to apply it

✅ When to Run SCA

• After initial installation — catch misconfigurations early
• Before going to production — verify tuning is correct
• After major updates — ensure new kernel defaults are compatible
• When troubleshooting performance issues — spot common bottlenecks