Tag Archives: FOS

FOS 8.2.1 – the one that is required.. or not?

Like clockwork Brocade releases new FOS version around every 6 months. No news here. FOS 8.2.1 is however a release you may need to pay special attention to especially if you have X6 director class switches hooked up to a 240 volt, 50 Hz power mains as well as sitting between a rock and a hard place with the 7800 extension switch but don;t have the budget to go to a relatively pricey 7840. One other thing is the change in licensing hardening on pizza-box switches which makes the upgrade to this release a one-way street without being able to go back.

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Brocade FOS version 8 and 32G hardware

8-ball

If you’ve been laying low during Christmas last year and have overlooked that Brocade announced its first to market with “Gen 6” (32G) hardware and FOS code 8, you’re forgiven. FOS 8 was mainly released to support the new G620 hardware but a lot of functions and features did either not work or were not supported yet. FOS 8 also dropped support for a lot of hardware which is a good thing IMHO. 8G equipment like the DCX4S, DCX as well as the single unit switches like the 5100 and 5300 were dropped.

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Open Source Software (OSS) and security breaches in proprietary firmware

It is no secret that many vendors use open source software in their products and solutions. One of the most ubiquitous  is Linux which is often the base of many of these products and used as core-OS because of it’s flexibility and freely available status without the need of keeping track of licenses (to some extent) and costs.

These OSS tools have different development back-grounds and are subject to policies of the person (or people/companies) who develop it. This obviously results in the fact that defects or bugs may result in security issues especially when it involves network related applications. Recently the bugs in OpenSSL and Apache have gain much traction as some of these are fairly significant and can result in access breaches or denial of service.

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