If your organization is running VMware ESX as its virtualization platform, I sincerely hope you were not severely affected by the "time bomb" bug that slipped in via a late-July patch. The flaw prevented powered-off ESX servers from being started after Aug. 12. The first thoughts that occurred to me were mental flashes of grounded production servers left in the cold while administrators and managers frantically attempt to resolve the problem.

Certainly, this issue will severely affect confidence in the company, with a knock-down effect on how people perceive enterprise-level virtualization. Whatever happens though, this fiasco is certain to cause companies to take another look at their virtualization strategies, both at the administrative and strategic level. At the minimum, companies will have to consider implementing more internal qualification tests, as well as deliberately staggering their roll-outs. I have to point out though, that none of the above would have caught the recent VMware problem.

Has this bug bitten your organization badly? Do write in and tell me about it. - Paul