Today I received an email from Supermicro that they've released new BMC firmware and a BIOS for some systems I subscribed to. Nothing special.

That is, until I noticed what machine was listed. Introduced late 2015/early 2016

I have never purchased whatever support. Both Supermicro and Dell work this way.

HPE does not. They require you to have overzealous support agreements, costing an arm and a leg. No agreement, no BIOS updates for you

In most cases, companies do prefer these support agreements. Having someone to assist you when shit hits the fan for a (relatively) small stack of dough is a no-brainer.

However - this is completely fucked up. It really hurts the second hand market, homelabs, etc. Imagine not being able to patch against nasty silicon-level vulnerabilities because those fuckers want to see 5K of your hard earned cash

#Rant #Security #Vulnerabilities #Hardware #Servers #HPE #SysOp #Homelab