VMware vSphere Patching Best Practices

Midjourney AI depiction of a metamorphosis and change, a painting of hundreds of butterflies fluttering in blue, orange, red, and yellow

Patching and updating VMware vSphere 8 is a LOT easier than it used to be, and has a lot less risk with the advent of vCenter Reduced Downtime Update and the creation of an internal LVM snapshot on the VCSA. That said, this is a collection of some VMware vSphere “patching best practices” that tend to make patching a smoother and more successful experience. Some of these ideas seem obvious, but in large environments things change without proper communications to downstream teams. When you assume nothing, and verify things before proceeding, you have a much more successful experience. Preparation Ensure Access to VCSA Root and SSO Administrator Accounts Ensure that …

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Easy Dell PowerEdge Firmware Updates

With all the CPU and other hardware vulnerabilities present in modern servers it’s very important to keep your Dell firmware updated. Various operating systems, like VMware ESXi, Linux, and Microsoft Windows ship CPU microcode with their OSes, but that only updates the CPUs. There are still other vulnerabilities that exist, like in the Intel Management Engines, memory controllers, UEFI firmware, and so on that if left unpatched present an opportunity for attackers. I dislike complexity. A lot. Adding more tools to an environment in order to do a job, like managing Dell firmware updates on servers, also adds complexity. Thankfully, on Dell PowerEdge servers there are a couple of approaches …

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