Dell EMC updates VxRail software to address Spectre

So Dell EMC have finally released the patches for their VxRail appliances, I know many of my customers were asking about these patches - in a way it's good it was slightly delayed given how many normal VMware customers experienced issues when patching and how one patch was pulled by VMware! The good thing about … Continue reading Dell EMC updates VxRail software to address Spectre

Spectre & Meltdown Update

So it seems that the microcode patches released by VMware associated with their recent Security Advisory (VMSA-2018-0004) have been pulled.... https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/52345 So that's ESXi650-201801402-BG, ESXi600-201801402-BG, or ESXi550-201801401-BG. The microcode patch provided by Intel was buggy and there seems to be issues when VMs access the new speculative execution control mechanism (Haswell & Broadwell processors). However, I … Continue reading Spectre & Meltdown Update

Spectre & Meltdown Vulnerabilities

So at the beginning of the new year, news broke via The Register that there could be a potential security vulnerability to Intel processors (Meltdown) and how it was a problem which couldn't be easily fixed by a microcode update because of how the Intel architecture does speculative execution of code (in a nutshell this is how … Continue reading Spectre & Meltdown Vulnerabilities