VMware apologizes for ESX bug

Users who have updated to the latest version of VMware's flagship ESX product found themselves in a quandary when they could not power up their virtual servers earlier this week. The culprit proved to be leftover code from beta versions that slipped in through the most recent update in late-July.

Implemented in order to better control beta releases, the "time bomb" code was designed to stop the virtual machines from being powered up past a certain date, which in this case was August 12. The company has since issued a patch that allowed enterprises to start up affected virtual servers, with VMware CEO Paul Maritz apologizing for the "disruption and difficulty" in an open letter.

For more about the VMware ESX snafus:
- check out this Computerworld article