Hi Everyone,

I think by now everyone should be familiar with the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities and the nature of them.

Open Enterprise Server (OES) by virtue of running on a Linux platform is indirectly impacted and SUSE has been leading the response from our end, by releasing the kernel and CPU microcode patches for the impacted releases lines, which also underpin OES.

In addition you may need to apply firmware / BIOS updates from your CPU / hardware vendors too.  More details on these vulnerabilities can be found in this knowledge base article.

Here's some details on the various OES versions and their patching status

• • OES 2018 - Updates for SLES12 SP2 are under OES QA and will be released via the Integrated Update Channel in a day or two.
    
    
    • • [15th Jan Update : OES QA found a regression in network driver specific to this platform, and there have been stability issues with the CPU microcode updates.  So we are holding off until things are in better shape]
    
    
    • • [23rd Jan Update : Known issues addressed. Updated kernel and associated updates will be released when ready]
    
    
    • • [21st Feb Update : The latest set of fixes / updates have been qualified and have been made available on OES2018 Update Channels]
    
    
    

• • OES 2015 SP1 - Patches have been available directly from the SLES 11 SP4 update channels

• • OES 11 SP3 - Patches have been available directly from the SLES 11 SP4 update channels. (Despite OES11SP3 being out of general support

• • OES 11 SP2 - Patches for SLES11 SP3 may be made available in due course, despite OES11 SP2 being out of support, due to the nature of the issue.
    
    
    • • [19th Jan Update : Necessary SLES / Micro-code updates have been made available on the OES11 SP2 channel]
    
    
    

As outlined in the KB article above QEMU / KVM and XEN updates are also needed and they will be released as and when available.  For more information on SLES Hypervisor environments refer this article.

Hope this gives some clarity and necessary reassurance to the OES customers.  If you have general SLES related questions on this topic, refer to the links above.

If you have any OES specific questions or comments, direct them to pmadhan@microfocus.com

Thank you.