patching servers...

Hi all,
I wanted to get a few ideas of what people do to test their systems once
they have applied a patch/hotfix.

Currently I pull one of the hotswap drives that has the OS mirrored on it
and then let it run with the patch applied for a few days/week before
letting it rebuild.
In that time I will check things like event logs/performance and do some
general 'listening' for any issues. 
Does anyone have a more scientific method? What do you keep an eye on? Also,
Do you actually ever check whether the vulnerability(for example) that the
patch was designed to thwart has actually been plugged? 
In the last two years I've only had one instance of a patch causing an OS to
fail--and then just removing and then reapplying the patch seemed to work
just fine. However, I don't want to get complacent.

Kind Regards
Murad Talukdar


 



---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------