MSSQLTips: Tip #49 – SQL Servers Assessment for the Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerabilities

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2018 started out with bad news for most IT professionals. A new “speculative execution side-channel attacks” vulnerability affected many modern processors and operating systems. This vulnerability is very complex and requires patching on many layers, including hardware, operating systems and the application layer.

Database Administrators (DBAs) have to be prepared to patch every SQL Server starting with SQL Server version 2008 and the recommended patching procedure is different for different servers depending on SQL Server configuration settings and features used.

How can we determine what servers are affected and what steps should we take to protect SQL Server?

In this tip we will provide a “Meltdown/Spectre SQL Server Assessment Script” that you can run in Central Management Server (CMS) against all of your SQL Servers. This script will produce a report with recommendations/scenarios for patching and display configurations/features that are not secure and enabled on SQL Server.

Then we will provide a couple of remediation steps to review unsecure use cases.

After remediation we will run the Main Assessment Script again and review the final recommendations.

Please read the latest MSSQLTips post: “SQL Servers Assessment for the Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerabilities“.

Check out all of my tips here: http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlserverauthor/94/svetlana-golovko/.

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Education/Courses

Listing of work-related courses/training I took:

  • Extend your datacenter to the cloud with Microsoft Azure
  • Active Leadership
  • DESIGNING A DATA SOLUTION WITH MICROSOFT SQL SERVER
  • Implementing a Data Warehouse with Microsoft SQL Server 2012
  • Administering Windows Server 2012
  • Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases
  • Automating Administration with Windows PowerShell 2.0
  • Implementing and Maintaining a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Database
  • ITIL V3 Foundation
  • Oracle 11g Administration I; Oracle 11g Administration II
  • Oracle 10g Performance Tuning
  • Troubleshooting and optimising database servers using Microsoft SQL Server 2005
  • Implementing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
  • Administrating and Automating Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Database & Servers
  • Updating Database Development Skills to Microsoft SQL Server 2005
  • Introduction to Oracle 9i: PL/SQL; Oracle 9i DBA Fundamentals
  • Designing and Implementing OLAP Solutions Using Microsoft SQL Server 2000
  • Implementing Business Logic with MDX in Microsoft SQL Server 2000
  • Database Administrator – Microsoft SQL Server 2000
  • Systems Engineer on Windows NT 4.0 (MSCE bundle).
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