The Meltdown/Spectre vulnerability requires software fixes that slow existing servers by up to 30%. For some data center operators, that could have huge and immediate capacity and performance implications that will ripple through the supply chain.
This research report was produced by Uptime Institute Research and is available, along with many other in-depth reports to Uptime Institute Network members.
In this report, the Uptime Institute Research team addresses the potential impact of the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities on data center operators including:
- The performance impact on affected servers, some speculating as much as 30%
- How some operators may be forced into a hardware refresh ahead of schedule, to benefit from efficiency gains of new hardware without the vulnerabilities
- Possibility of impacts being limited due to over-provisioning of hardware in the industry at large
- Ancillary impacts on power/cooling costs associated with increased server load of patched systems