Yandex Builds Secure KVM Access for BareMetal Servers with IPMI Proxy and Network Isolation
Yandex BareMetal engineers have published a detailed account of how they enabled external customers to use KVM over IPMI without exposing the management network to the kinds of attacks that previously compromised an internal cloud of 25,000 hosts.
The service must deliver two critical capabilities: installation of custom operating systems and recovery when network settings are misconfigured. Both require remote console and virtual media access that legacy BMC firmware only provides through proprietary protocols, often Java Web Start applications signed with outdated hashes such as md4.
To unify access, the team created IPMI Proxy. Each user session launches a lightweight Docker container containing only the components required for a given hardware platform: an XWindow system, a VNC server, a legacy Java runtime with relaxed security settings, Firefox for HTML5 KVM, and optional Java applications for ISO mounting. The container converts the vendor-specific protocol into standard VNC, which noVNC then renders inside the Yandex Cloud console.
Because many BMCs speak only IPv4 while Yandex infrastructure uses IPv6, the team deployed IPMI Router servers running the jool kernel module for stateless NAT64 translation. Each IPv4 address is mapped to a predictable IPv6 address by preserving the last three octets, allowing DHCP to remain stateless and eliminating the need to synchronize lease databases during VRRP failover.
Security controls were added at every layer. Switch ACLs forward frames only toward IPMI Router MAC addresses. 802.1X authentication prevents MAC spoofing. An eBPF program on the routers drops any packet whose IPv4 address does not match the expected MAC, blocking ARP poisoning. Inside the proxy containers, network rules enforced by ip6tables restrict outbound connections to the single authorized BMC.
ISO images stored in S3 are mounted from outside the container as volumes rather than granting the container direct S3 access. Permission checks performed every ten seconds through the Yandex Cloud IAM model ensure that only users with current server-management rights can maintain an active KVM session.
The resulting architecture normalizes KVM and virtual media across heterogeneous hardware while keeping the IPMI fabric isolated from both external attackers and compromised neighboring servers.
Related articles
OpenAI Releases GPT-6.1 Terra: Cost-Effective Model Focused on Computer Control, Image Analysis and Practical Automation
OpenAI has launched GPT-6.1 Terra, a new model positioned between its high-end GPT-6 Astra and more affordable options in the GPT-6 family. The model emphasizes real-world computer interaction, visual understanding of documents and interfaces, and reduced error rates rather than raw reasoning benchmarks. It supports a 1.05 million token context window, image inputs, and tool use through the Responses API while cutting input token prices by half compared with its predecessor. Published benchmarks show substantial gains on Terminal-Bench 4.0, OSWorld 2.1 and Agents' Last Exam, with error rates dropping sharply at both low and maximum reasoning levels. OpenAI stresses that the model still requires human oversight for high-stakes actions and does not directly process audio or video. The release targets developers and enterprises seeking reliable automation of repetitive multi-step tasks at lower cost than flagship models.
Yandex Black October: How Architectural Flaws and Capacity Mismanagement Turned Data Center Losses Into a 11-Day Fintech Coma
In October 2026 three Yandex data centers in Central Russia were physically destroyed within days, triggering the collapse of Yandex Cloud and multiple core services. Between the first and third site failures engineers had 74 hours to restore quorum and rebalance workloads yet failed to do so because Control Plane components remained tied to the lost zone and spare capacity had been eliminated to cut costs. Core banking and BNPL systems entered Read-Only mode after losing quorum, forcing a complete stop-the-world reconciliation that lasted until 22 October. Backups stored inside the same regional S3 buckets proved unusable, resulting in a seven-day RPO and primary-key collisions after restoration. The incident exposed that Metro-Cluster designs had been incorrectly treated as full Disaster Recovery and that aggressive AP microservice patterns created logical split-brain conditions outside the database layer.
Astra Group Releases Low-Code Astra AI Platform for Building Corporate AI Agents in Closed Environments
Astra Group has launched the Astra AI Platform, a low-code constructor designed for creating corporate AI applications that operate entirely within closed circuits without reliance on foreign clouds. The platform targets small and medium businesses as well as large corporations, enabling rapid deployment of AI secretaries, technical support assistants, and other agents in days rather than months. It forms part of the broader Astra AI ecosystem and includes two main constructors: one for machine learning model training and deployment, and another for LLM-based language assistants, document search, and process automation. Users can assemble scenarios from visual blocks, debug them in real time, or extend functionality with custom Python code when needed. The solution supports RAG-based knowledge bases, integration with external tools such as CRM and ERP systems, and the coordination of multiple agents for distributed task handling. One demonstrated use case involves processing ten pages of engineering drawings and specifications in five minutes to prepare data for downstream systems. The product is already listed in the Russian domestic software registry and available to customers.
Multi-Tenancy Isolation in VictoriaMetrics, VictoriaLogs and Grafana: Building Client Separation in a Shared Stack
Voltir runs a single shared monitoring stack consisting of VictoriaMetrics, VictoriaLogs, Grafana and vmalert for all customers instead of deploying separate instances per tenant. Isolation relies on numeric account IDs enforced at every layer: nginx validates tokens against the platform API before proxying writes, Grafana data sources hard-code tenant accounts, and vmalert rules receive automatic account filters. The team discovered that a single malformed rule or template could break alerting for every tenant because vmalert loads the entire rules directory at once. They also found that Grafana automatically created personal organizations granting Org Admin rights, accumulating hundreds of orphaned organizations and users that consumed disk space and resources. A dedicated cleanup module plus hourly reconciliation now removes rules, organizations, series and users when a tenant is deleted, while isolation tests verify both data and API objects across tenants.