VMware vExpert vSAN 2018 Announced

Phew.... *sigh of relief* ..... thankfully this year I've made the cut again for the vExpert vSAN track! =) Almost didn't make it as I was on holiday during the application process and missed the original deadline. Thankfully the application was still live so I sneaked in an application and sent my apologies to the vExpert … Continue reading VMware vExpert vSAN 2018 Announced

VMware vSphere 6.7 & 6.5 update 2 – Resources

Just over a fortnight ago VMware released their latest version of vSphere and vSAN - 6.7.... unfortunately for me, I was neck-deep in a tender response and was in Paris for a number of days for a meeting - so spent most of my travels looking at a small mobile phone screen trying to read … Continue reading VMware vSphere 6.7 & 6.5 update 2 – Resources

MTI Secure Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Webinar & Guide

Back end of February I presented a webinar with my colleague, Andrew Tang, around Key Challenges and Considerations for Securing Hyper-Converged Infrastructure. The webinar has been uploaded for public consumption by the marketing team at MTI Technology. As I mentioned previously in my blog, I don’t really touch upon product in this webinar as the … Continue reading MTI Secure Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Webinar & Guide

Dell EMC VxRail Software Update – Spectre Guest OS leakage mitigation

I posted earlier in the year that Dell EMC had released a Security Advisory to address Spectre (Meltdown doesn’t really affect VMware and hence VxRail). One of the items that wasn't addressed in the original fix was Guest OS leakage mitigation between processes within the VM - this required CPU/BIOS microcode updates which were not yet available … Continue reading Dell EMC VxRail Software Update – Spectre Guest OS leakage mitigation

vExpert 2018 Award Announcement

So last Thursday/Friday the vExpert slack channel was awash with lots of nervous energy as people were eagerly waiting for the announcement to see if they had been accepted back into the vExpert program for 2018.... Strange, but to me it seemed that everyone was a little bit more nervous this year then previous years! … Continue reading vExpert 2018 Award Announcement

MTI Secure Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Webinar

So last Thursday I was asked by the marketing peeps at my company, MTI Technology, to run a webinar with my colleague, Andrew Tang, around what Hyper-Converged Infrastructure is all about, why it's suddenly become so popular within the industry, and how best to secure a HCI solution. The webinar has now been uploaded for … Continue reading MTI Secure Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Webinar

End of General Support for vSphere 5.5 and other Products

So there's 7 months left from today until vSphere 5.5 and complimentary VMware products go out of General Support. The official EoGS date for vSphere 5.5 is 19th September 2018. The products going EoGS on that same date are: Site Recovery Manager 5.5/5.8 vSAN 5.5 vCenter Server 5.5 (including Update Manager 5.5) vSphere Replication 5.5/5.6/5.8 … Continue reading End of General Support for vSphere 5.5 and other Products

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