Feb 14

Spectre and Meltdown – Revert back to a previous BIOS version (Dell)

Hi, with the microcode included in the BIOS updates released to address Spectre (Variant 2), CVE-2017-5715. Dell is advising that all customers should not deploy the BIOS update for the Spectre (Variant 2) vulnerability at this time. They have removed the impacted BIOS updates from our support pages and are working with Intel on a new BIOS update that will include new microcode from Intel. If you have already deployed the BIOS update, in order to avoid unpredictable system behavior, you can revert back (downgrade) to a previous BIOS version (tables of BIOS updates for Dell PowerEdge Server Products). The BIOS can be updated using the iDRAC…

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Feb 05

Veeam Availability Suite – New licensing option (per-VM)

Last week, Veeam has launched a huge product licensing change that some of our customers have been asking for the per Virtual Machine licensing option. As you know, previously Veeam Software has sold their products for virtual infrastructure to end users strictly on per-socket basis. And most customers loved it because they did not need to worry about the number of VMs they are protecting. But in certain edge cases, such as heavy ROBO (Remote Office / Branch Office) environments, this was not a very good deal as end-users sometimes had to license 2 sockets running just a couple of VMs.

Veeam Availability Suite 10

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Jan 30

Spectre and Meltdown – Intel identified the root cause…

Hi, just few days ago, Intel had received reports from a few customers of higher system reboots after applying firmware updates (reboot issues we reported Jan. 11). As of January 22, 2018, Intel did not recommend installing patches regarding reboot issues and unpredictable system behavior. Intel seems to have nailed the root cause of intermittent reboots of Broadwell and Haswell CPU based computers that started to happen after installing the initial firmware updates and fixed the bug…

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Jan 25

Spectre and Meltdown – Patches are being recalled by VMware & Dell EMC – Veeam’s feedback

Hello,

For those of you who have already patched your ESXi hosts with the initial set of patches, please note that those patches are being recalled by VMware, and action is required. VMware has also updated their security advisory “VMware Security Adisories“ late in the week. There are many questions regarding performance impact of the corresponding OS patches on Veeam performance. For your information, it’s being evaluated in intern probably in R&D department. Veeam development team conducts performance analysis of the available patches on servers with installed Veeam products.

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Jan 24

Microsoft ReFS new driver version fixed all issues!

UPDATED (February 26, 2018): ReFS – Microsoft releases cumulative update 4077525!

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Hi, the confirmation that beta ReFS driver version 10.0.14393.1934 fixed all issues, including from those with very large volumes. And reported are not just those repository server lockups fixed, but also a significantly improved performance of all backup operations. These were all excellent news, and got even better news in response: looks like the new ReFS driver is scheduled to be shipped in the next (February) cumulative update! So finally, the driver will become available for everyone and supported for production use. Many of IT Experts (especially Veeam) had spent much time working with Microsoft on this issue and finally, thanks to them! Customer Feedback: One of my customers found a temporary way around the problem. It has significantly increased the memory (RAM) on the target server. The result is ReFS bugs are now limited.

New - Windows Server 2016

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