Bladewatch.com

This was something that I was talking about with a colleague, this article from the Windows blog talks about support and security patch updates for Windows XP finishing in 2014. Obviously switching from Windows XP to Windows 7 is not something your organization is necessarily going to do overnight, but it should be something that should be in planning or implementation going forward possibly combined with a virtualization or hardware refresh project. Do check out the post.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms11-jul.mspx

Version: 1.0

This bulletin summary lists security bulletins released for July 2011.

With the release of the security bulletins for July 2011, this bulletin summary replaces the bulletin advance notification originally issued July 7, 2011. For more information about the bulletin advance notification service, see Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification.

For information about how to receive automatic notifications whenever Microsoft security bulletins are issued, visit Microsoft Technical Security Notifications.

Microsoft have released patches for July and be sure to check which systems are in scope, as ever applying the monthly patches secures the platform and will be the first thing your service provider or vendor asks when logging a call.

http://www.bladewatch.com/findmyfirmware/

I have been getting great feedback from people that have downloaded the FindMyFirmware application, it’s very simple, it’s a bladewatch baseline listing the server firmware that is applicable to that model of server, plus a built in link to download the specifications of the server, as well as provide information on an estimated manufacture date or ‘age of the server’, so you can determine it’s upgrade potential or suitability for replacement etc.

In summary, you select a server model and it displays:

• Current firmware – this is according to Bladewatch baselines, we tend to update them every few months
• Manufacture date – this is averaged with the information possible we have to hand, so if a server was released 2007 – 2009, we say 2008.
• Specifications – a built in button which loads the vendor specifications or product briefing for that server.

I have received some requests from colleagues in the industry and users asking when we were planning to add on additional vendors, you would be surprised how time consuming it is to gather the information and make it accessible for our application. I will be working on this in the near future.

I have added the Dell R610 and R710 11 Generation servers, as well as their PowerEdge 1950 / 2950 and 6950s. Check out our description page for more information. I always encourage you to check the dell support (www.dell.com/support) site for more detailed information about your server.

You can download FindMyFirmware here.