If you have any spare hardware for it, setting up a small test environment
can help, especially if you are running any custom software on your
servers. That way, you have another layer of protection against the
update(s) you are installing blowing your production servers out of the
water. The initial cost of setting up a test server should pay for itself
shortly by saving you a few "oh, crap" moments each year.
As far as testing the patches on a test system goes, you just want to run
a server through all possible scenarios. Run everything that you expect to
work on a regular basis, test any services that the server provides to end
users, and so on.. checking your event log and any application specific
logs for errors is probably the easiest route for that.
And of course, always read release notes for any known issues or conflicts
introduced by a patch.
Stefan Dorn
Murad Talukdar <talukdar_m@subway.com> wrote on 01-09-2006 11:06:22 PM:
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
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRIVACY NOTICE: This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole
use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain business confidential
andprivileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or
distribution isprohibited. If this e-mail was not intended for you, please
notify the sender by replye-mail that you received this in error. Destroy all
copies of the original message andattachments.
