Patch Best Practice.

I need the best practice in applying support packs in a system with heaps of customization and advanced corrections.
Whats the best option?
1.) Apply patches -> revert all notes and customization to original in SPAU-> re-apply all needed customization transport.
or
2.) Apply support packs -> keep the notes and customization.
thanks,
Roel

Hi,
Apply the support pack,do the Modification Adjustments(maintain the customization).Full functional testing is required in all the cases.
Regards,
Sam

Similar Messages

Monthly Windows Server maintenance and patching, best practices?

WSUS, or System Center Essentials or like that from microsoft itself, its quite good and you can delay the deployment or manage it as your needs.

Greetings All,
I would like to reduce our reliance on a MSP for performing server maintenance and patching and would like to know some best practices for doing updates on production servers.
Are there programs or services out there that track Microsoft updates for Windows Server 2008+, and lists possible issues that they may cause? How do you go about monthly updates for your critical servers?
Thanks
This topic first appeared in the Spiceworks Community

OS patching best practices

Hi - we have a number of Solaris 10 servers all running non-global zones and setup with SVM on UFS file systems. I'm wondering now what the best method to O/S patch these is, at present I do this:
1) stop all non-global zones.
2) split disk mirrors
3) stop any remaining apps / processes.
4) with server still in runlevel 3 patch the live boot env.
5) reboot
6) if all ok, reattach the disk mirrors.
My question is, is there a better way to do this. There seems to be several ways to do this.Would I be better performing any patching in single user mode for starters. Also having a quick google I can see that some people suggest splitting the mirrors and revert back to booting from a single physical disk as described here http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/systems/articles/splitsvm-jsp-138936.html or some suggest you again split the disk mirrors but then mount the detached submirror and patch this, this method seems quite long winded with a lot of steps to follow but does make sense.
My only other question is all our servers are physically like this:
disk0 + disk1 used for O/S
disk2 + disk3 used for non-global zones (/export/zones)
With either of the two other methods mentioned above do I need to factor in the disks used for non-global zones when patching or do I just leave these untouched and patch the O/S?
I've also heard many times before that ZFS is much better in this situation, some of our newer servers are setup in this way and I do patch by creating an ABE. It's just our older servers using UFS I'm concerned about.
Thanks - J.

I used to patch similar to this as well. Single user mode would be better (though I've done it lots of times in run level 3 and survived). Also, definitely split the root and zone mirrors. Just splitting the root disks could mean that your zones could end up on later versions that your global zone - and that just leads to problems.
Also check your /etc/pdo/patch.conf (or is it /etc/patch/pdo.conf? Can't check right now). Change the entry to your amount of non-global zones. This can speed up your patching by a bit.
Another thing I do, when it's not me that personally installed the global zone and and/or the non-global zones, is that before my patching I do a detach and a re-attach (with -u) of the non-global zones so that I know my patching levels of my global zone and the non-global zones are in sync. This can take a while though but it's a good safety net if you do lot of copying of zones from one global zone to another like we do.

Exchnage sp1 to sp3 Update Best Practices?

Can someone outline Patching Best Practices?
I need to upgrade Exchnage 2010 sp1 to sp3 for my potential customer?-There are Few questions in my mind
-How do i proceed with Multi site Deployment , can i patch all CAS, MBx and Edge servers for site A and then move to site 2?
-What are things that must be taken care of while performing whole process? -I've theoretical overview of how to proceed with the Upgrade, Just wanted to make sure if
there is anything else that needs to be taken care of before performing this to production environments?
Thanks in Advance.

Hi,
In addition to Will Martin's suggestion, I would like to verify if there is a DAG in your environment. If yes, please follow the steps below to upgrade it.
1. Run the StartDagServerMaintenance.ps1 script to put the DAG member into maintenance mode and prepare it for the update rollup installation.
2. Install the update rollup.
3. Run the StopDagServerMaintenance.ps1 script to take the DAG member out of maintenance mode and put it back into production.
4. Optionally rebalance the DAG by using the RedistributeActiveDatabases.ps1 script.
Hope this can be helpful to you.
Best regards,
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help, and unmark the answers if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact [email protected]
Amy Wang
TechNet Community Support

Best Practice for applying patches in WL 8.1

Below is what I did to apply patches to WL 8.1 SP2. Is there a better way?
Best Practice? Thanks in advance.
1) Created directory.
C:\bea\weblogic81\server\lib\patches
2) Copied jar files to patches directory.
CR127930_81sp2.jar
CR124746_81sp2.jar
3) Modified startWebLogic.cmd to include jar files first in the classpath.
set
CLASSPATH=%WL_HOME%\server\lib\patches\CR124746_81sp2.jar;%WL_HOME%\server\l
ib\patches\CR127930_81sp2.jar;%WEBLOGIC_CLASSPATH%;%POINTBASE_CLASSPATH%;%JA
VA_HOME%\jre\lib\rt.jar;%WL_HOME%\server\lib\webservices.jar;%CLASSPATH%
4) Restarted server and saw in console that the patches were applied.

Hi:
SAP Standard does not recommend you to update quantity field in asset master data. Just leave the Qty Field Blank , just mention the Unit of Measure as EA. While you post acquisition through F-90 or MIGO this field will get updated in Asset master data automatically. Hope this will help you.
Regards

Best Practice for Portal Patches and effort estimation

Hi ,
One of our client is applying the following patches
1. ECC 6.0 SP15(currently SP14)
2. ESS MSS SP15(currently SP14 with some level of functional customization )
3. EP 7 SP18(currently SP14)
We would like to kwow the best practice for applying portal patches and the effort estimation for redoing the portal devt on the new patch.
o   What is the overall level of effort with applying Portal patches?
o   How are all the changes to SAP objects handle? Do they have to be
     manually re-entered?
o What is the impact of having a single NWDI instance across the
    Portal Landscape during the Patch process?
Regards,
Revathi Raju.

Hi Revathi,
o What is the overall level of effort with applying Portal patches?
overall effort to apply the patch is apprx 1/2-1 days for NW7 system. This is exclude the patch files download because it's based on your download speed.
o How are all the changes to SAP objects handle? Do they have to be
manually re-entered?
Depending on your customization. Normally it wont effect if you created the customzation application apart from SAP standard application
o What is the impact of having a single NWDI instance across the
Portal Landscape during the Patch process?
Any change that related to NWDI, you might be need to re-deployed from NWDI itself.
Thanks
Regards,
AZLY

SLES OES Patching using ZCM - Best Practice?

Have recently updated an underused ZLM 7.3 to ZCM 11 and have started to utilise it to perform patching of SLES 10 SP3 and OES 2.
At present I have a Novell subscription that downloads from novell NU as Patches with
Create Category based Bundle Groups on.
I hadn't at this point got my head around the sandbox but now want to utilise this as I don't want to implement it willy nilly and have patches deployed and installed without testing first.
So first question is whether there is a best practice document for using ZCM 11 for patching SLES 10 and Sles/oes boxes that describes how best to use the sandbox.
Next question is whether sandbox applies to the patches or only monolithic bundles
At the end of the day it would be great to have a best practice document on how to utilise ZCM with change control over keeping SLES10/OES boxes patched up to date

Hello,
updates via ZCM is also a problem for me.
At least i could give a little response from testing.
As stated in the oes2 documentation patches had to be used for updates. At that point i had the problem that the subscription only created a bundle group which included the patches.
The monolithic bundle seems to be an ordinary update (zcm docu states rpm -U ...) and so should not be used for oes2 servers.
I found out that its ok to rename the patch bundle group created by the subscription to fix the patchlist. I use bundle names which include the date to keep updates from sles and oes in sync.
So you should be able to do updates with these bundlegroups without problem but it is not very nice because each patch bundle had its on log report and entry in the bundle list.
So to keep a global view is not very easy.
The other problem is that there is no official documentation neither on the oes2 or the zcm site how to correct update/patch a sles or oes system with zcm (without patchlink).
Hope this will be included soon as all linux satellite server will have the problem that this is the only way to get updates without direkt connection to the internet - at least as far as i can see.

SAP BI4 SP2 Patch 7 Webi Connection to BW Best Practice

We are working with the version 4.0 SP 2 patch 7 of BI4 and developing some reports with WEBI and we are wondering about wich is the best method to access to BW Data.
At the moment we are using BICS because read in no few places that this is the best method to consume BW DATA cause have improvements is perforance, hierarchies, etc, but i don't know if this is really true.
Are BICS the best method to access to BW Data, this is the way recomended by SAP?
In the fillter panel of a webi document, we cant use "OR" clause, is not possible use this clause????
When we working with hierarchies and change the hierarchy for the dimension value or viceversa the report throw an error of AnwserPromts API (30270)
When we working with BEX queries containning variables and try to merge that variable with a Report Prompt(From another query) , and execute the queries shows an error indicating that one prompt has no value.
(fAnyone experienced this problems too? anyone find out a solutions to this issues?
Best Regards
Martin.

Hi Martin
In BI 4.0 BICS is the method to access BW not universes. .UNV based on BW are there for legacy.
Please look at this forum ticket with links on Best practices BI 4.0 - BW and if you do a search in SDN you can find many tickets on this topic.
How to access BEx directly in WEBI 4.0
Regards
Federica

Best Practice: SAPGUI Version and Patch Upgrades

Hello -
Does anyone have some thoughts/information on best practices relating to SAPGUI version and patch upgrades.
Obviously, sometimes upgrades are forced upon us (e.g. 7.10 for Vista) and in other cases it may just be considered "nice to have".
Either way - it always signifies regression test and deployment effort. How do we balance the benefit and cost?
Thanks, Steve

Hi Steve,
you're right for the first part, yes, we (usually) patch twice a year.
Now for the rest
An uninstall will only happen on release changes (6.20->6.40->7.10), i. e. about every 4-5 years as SAP releases them.
Patches are applied to the installation server and the setup on the client will only update changed program parts. For example, upgrading 6.40->7.10 took about 10 minutes (incl. uninstall), applying patch 1 less than 5 minutes.
I recommend, you read the "SAP Frontend Installation Guide - 7.10" which you find at SMP alias sapgui. Navigate to Media Library - Literature. It explains setup of the installation server (sounds like a big thing, but ain't much more than creating a share), creating packages, applying updates etc.
Peter
Points always appreciated

Require official Oracle Best Practices about PSU patches

A customer complained about the following
Your company statements are not clear...
On your web page - http://www.oracle.com/security/critical-patch-update.html
The following is stated!
Critical Patch Update
Fixes for security vulnerabilities are released in quarterly Critical Patch Updates (CPU), on dates announced a year in advance and published on the Oracle Technology Network. The patches address significant security vulnerabilities and include other fixes that are prerequisites for the security fixes included in the CPU.
The major products patched are Oracle Database Server, Oracle Application Server, Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Collaboration Suite, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise Tools, PeopleSoft CRM, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, JD Edwards OneWorld XE, Oracle WebLogic Suite, Oracle Communications and Primavera Product Suite.
Oracle recommends that CPUs be the primary means of applying security fixes to all affected products as they are released more frequently than patch sets and new product releases.
BENEFITS
* Maximum Security—Vulnerabilities are addressed through the CPU in order of severity. This process ensures that the most critical security holes are patched first, resulting in a better security posture for the organization.
* Lower Administration Costs—Patch updates are cumulative for many Oracle products. This ensures that the application of the latest CPU resolves all previously addressed vulnerabilities.
* Simplified Patch Management—A fixed CPU schedule takes the guesswork out of patch management. The schedule is also designed to avoid typical "blackout dates" during which customers cannot typically alter their production environments.
PROGRAM FEATURES
* Cumulative versus one-off patches—The Oracle Database Server, Oracle Application Server, Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Collaboration Suite, Oracle Communications Suite and Oracle WebLogic Suite patches are cumulative; each Critical Patch Update contains the security fixes from all previous Critical Patch Updates. In practical terms, the latest Critical Patch Update is the only one that needs to be applied if you are solely using these products, as it contains all required fixes. Fixes for other products, including Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise Tools, PeopleSoft CRM, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, and JD Edwards OneWorld XE are released as one-off patches, so it is necessary to refer to previous Critical Patch Update advisories to find all patches that may need to be applied.
* Prioritizing security fixes—Oracle fixes significant security vulnerabilities in severity order, regardless of who found the issue—whether the issue was found by a customer, a third party security researcher or by Oracle.
* Sequence of security fixes—Security vulnerabilities are first fixed in the current code line. This is the code being developed for a future major release of the product. The fixes are scheduled for inclusion in a future Critical Patch Update. However, fixes may be backported for inclusion in future patch sets or product releases that are released before their inclusion in a future Critical Patch Update.
* Communication policy for security fixes—Each Critical Patch Update includes an advisory. This advisory lists the products affected by the Critical Patch Update and contains a risk matrix for each affected product.
* Security alerts—Security alerts provide a notification designed to address a single bug or a small number of bugs. Security Alerts have been replaced by scheduled CPUs since January 2005. Unique or dangerous threats can still generate Security Alert email notifications through MetaLink and the Oracle Technology Network.
Nowhere in that statement is the Patch Set Update even mentioned. If Oracle intends to recommend to all customers that Patch Set Updates are the recommended means of Patching for Security and Functionality then it should be stated so here!
Please clarify!
Where can I find the current information so that I can use to Official Oracle statement as a reference for my Enterprise Practices and Standards document? The individual patch package references you are giving me do not state Oracle recommended Best Practice, they only speak to the specific patch package they describe. These do not help me in making an Enterprise statement of Practices and Standards.
I need to close the process out to capture a window of availability for Practices and Standards approval.
Do we have any Best Practice document about PSU patches available for customers?

cnawrati wrote:
A customer complained about the following
Your company statements are not clear...
On your web page - http://www.oracle.com/security/critical-patch-update.html
Who is the "your" to which you are referring?
<snip>
Nowhere in that statement is the Patch Set Update even mentioned. If Oracle intends to recommend to all customers that Patch Set Updates are the recommended means of Patching for Security and Functionality then it should be stated so here!Um. OK
Please clarify!
Of whom are you asking for a clarification?
Where can I find the current information so that I can use to Official Oracle statement as a reference for my Enterprise Practices and Standards document? The individual patch package references you Who is the "you" to which you refer?
are giving me do not state Oracle recommended Best Practice, they only speak to the specific patch package they describe. These do not help me in making an Enterprise statement of Practices and Standards.
I need to close the process out to capture a window of availability for Practices and Standards approval.
Be our guest.
Do we What do you mean "we", Kemosabi?
have any Best Practice document about PSU patches available for customers?This is a very confusing posting, but overall it looks like you are under the impression that this forum is some kind of channel for communicating back to Oracle Crop anything that happens to be on your mind about their corporate web site and/or policies and practices. Please be advised that this forum is simply a platform provided BY Oracle Corp as a peer operated user support group. No one here is responsible for anything on any Oracle web site. No one here is responsible for any content anywhere in the oracle.com domain, outside of their own personal posting on this forum. In other words, you can complain all you want about Oracle's policy, practice, and support, but "there's no one here but us chickens."

Best Practices for patching Exchange 2010 servers.

Hi Team,
Looking for best practices on patching Exchnage Server 2010.
Like precautions , steps and pre and post patching checks.
Thanks.

Are you referring to Exchange updates? If so:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff637981.aspx
Install the Latest Update Rollup for Exchange 2010
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee861125.aspx
Installing Update Rollups on Database Availability Group Members
Key points:
Apply in role order
CAS, HUB, UM, MBX
If you have CAS roles in an array/load-balanced, they should all have the same SP/RU level. so coordinate the Exchange updates and add/remove nodes as needed so you do not run for an extended time with different Exchange levels in the same array.
All the DAG nodes should be at the same rollup/SP level as well. See the above link on how to accomplish that.
If you are referring to Windows Updates, then I typically follow the same install pattern:
CAS, HUB, UM, MBX
With windows updates however, I tend not to worry about suspending activation on the DAG members rather simply move the active mailbox copies, apply the update and reboot if necessary.

Best Practices to do software Patching and Software Deployment for bigger environment like 300 K computers

Hi Friends,
i am looking for low level suggestions and a ppt/document etc too , The client base is 300 k users and spread globally ( major in three different regions), the requirement is
1) methodology to do software patching, can we patch all in one go or do we have to divide as per region etc
2) How many clients can be targeted for software patching in one go ( ex : can we target 20K clients in one go ?), i know there are other factors too will play key role here like band width etc , but i am looking answers out of real time experience
3) What Methodology to follow when it comes to critical/emergency updates ?
Regards
Tanoj
OSLM ENGINEER - SCCM 2007 & 2012

There is no single best practice to patching, if there were then SCCM would ship preconfigured :). As an example, Microsoft internally patches 300,000 workstations with 98% success in about a week according to their own podcast:
Microsoft Podcast
That said, I do follow a few rules when building a patching plan for a client. Maybe you'll find it helpful:
Always use a "soak tier". I forget where I first heard the term, but the idea is to have a good cross section of users get patches one or more weeks before your general deployment. This will help identify potential issues with a patch
before it hits general release. Make sure said group is NOT just the IT department ... we make the worst guinea pigs (we aren't known for closing out end of the month billing or posting legal documents).
When it comes to workstations, avoid needlessly phased deployment. 99% of the time, using local time zones is enough of a phased deployment. Unlike servers with very particular boot and patching orders, workstations can simply be patched. You
have enough collections in your environment ... so any new collection for patching should be justified.
Keep your ADR count down. It's tempting to build a new ADR for everything (workstations, general servers, exchange servers, etc.). Problem is that best practice also has you building a new SUG every time each ADR runs ... so you end up getting
flooded with update groups and that much more maintenance. When possible simply use maintenance windows to break up patching schedules instead of using mostly duplicate ADRs that simply have separate start dates.
Use Orchastrator. To me Orchastrator is to Software Updates what MDT is to Operating System Deployments: effectively mandatory. Even if you don't have complicated cluster updates you need to automate with SCO integrated to SCCM (there
are great examples on the web if you do), you can at the very least create run-books to manage that monthly maintenance you otherwise have to handle manually in SCCM (which is a lot IMO). I have monthly run-books that delete expired updates from SUGs,
consoldate SUGs older than 6 months unto a single annual group, and even create new update packages (and update all ADRs to use them) every 6 months to keep a single repository from getting too large.
I'm sure others out there can give you more advice ... but that's my two cents.

Best Practices for patch/rollback on Windows?

All,
I have been working on BO XI with UNIX for some time now and while I am pretty comfortable with managing it on UNIX, I am not too sure about the "best practices" when it comes to Windows.
I have a few specific questions:
1) What is the best way to apply a patch or Service Pack to BO XI R2 on a Windows envt without risking a system corruption?
- It is relatively easier on UNIX because you don't have to worry about registry entries and you can even perform multiple installations on the same box as long as you use different locations and ports.
2) What should be the ideal "rollback" strategy in case an upgrade/patch install fails and corrupts the system?
I am sure I will have some follow up questions, but if someone can get the discussion rolling with these for now, I would really appreciate!
Is there any documentation available around these topics on the boards some place?
Cheers,
Sarang

This is unofficial but usually if you run into a disabled system as a result of a patch and the removal/rollback does NOT work (in other words you are still down).
You should have made complete backups of your FRS, CMS DB, and any customizations in your environment.
Remove the base product and any seperate products that share registry keys (i.e. crystal reports)
Remove the left over directories (XIR2 this is boinstall\business objects\*)
Remove the primary registry keys (hkeylocalmachine\software\businessobjects\* & hkeycurrentuser\software\businessobjects\* )
Remove any legacy keys (i.e. crystal*)
Remove any patches from the registry (look in control panel and search for the full patch name)
Then reinstall the product (test)
add back any customizations
reinstall either the latest(patch prior to update) or newest patch(if needed)
and restore the FRS and CMS DB.
There are a few modifications to these steps and you should leave room to add more (if they improve your odds at success).
Regards,
Tim

Best Practices for automated patching?

Howdy,
We've been having trouble getting patching to work on our servers for months. I decided it's time to start over. I've done some searching and have found tons of different people saying they have the best practices and recommended ways of handling
patches but they're all different.
I'm using SCCM 2012 R2 and want to setup ADRs so that every month we can set all our servers up to install their Windows Updates. I have a few questions:
Is there an "Official" tutorial, video, walkthrough of how we should be doing this?
Is the best way to test this to set something up that is available ASAP but doesn't expire until far in the future? Should I then be able to see the patches in Software Center as available but they just won't actually do anything since the expiration
would be way down the road?
Most of our servers are running 2012 or 2012 r2 and we're just concerned with the standard patches that come out every month.
Thanks for any links, input, advice, etc.

> I never know if a tutorial I found is a good one or just some random person that recorded
what they were doing.
That's just it... tutorial's are meant to show you how the features work. They are not meant to be "follow these step-by-step in your production environment and you're done" instructions. Gerry and Niall's guides are to walk you through building
things out in a lab environment so you can learn them. You need to learn how the features work, look at the requirements of your company, and then
make conscious decisions about how to implement the tool to meet the requirements.
If you don't feel like you'll be able to synthesize that from knowledge learned in tutorials/guides/books, then I'd suggest bringing in a consultant with a deep understanding of the product to help you accomplish it.
I hope that helps,
Nash
Nash Pherson, Senior Systems Consultant
Now Micro -
My Blog Posts
If you found a bug or want the product to work differently,
share your feedback.
<-- If this post was helpful, please click the up arrow or propose as answer.

Microsoft best practices for patching a Cluster server

Good morning! I was wondering if you had any web resources (Webcasts) or whitepapers on Microsoft best practices for patching a Cluster server? I will list what I seen online; the third one was very good:
Failover Cluster Step-by-Step Guide: Configuring a Two-Node File Server Failover Cluster
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731844(v=ws.10).aspx
Failover Clusters in Windows Server 2008 R2
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff182338(v=ws.10)
Patching Windows Server Failover Clusters
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/174799/i

Hi Vincent!
I assume this step-by-step guide can also be used if you have more then 2 nodes, as long as you make sure majority of nodes are up (and quorum disk is available).
I just had a strange experience during maintenance of 2 nodes (node nr 7 and nr 8) in a 8 node hyper-v cluster R2 SP1 with CSV. I used SCVMM2012 to put the nodes in maintenance mode. (live migrating all resources to other nodes.) I then look in "Failover cluster
manager" to check that the nodes had been "Paused". And yes everything was just fine. I then did windows update and restartet, no problem. But after restart I wanted to run PSP (HP's update utility) to update some more drivers,software etc. During this PSP
update, node nr 02 suddenly failed. This node is not even a HP Blade, so I'm not sure how, but I know network NIC drivers and software where updated from PSP. So my question is:
Does changes in "Network Connections" on nodes in "Pause" mode affect other nodes in the cluster?
The network are listed as "Up" during Pause mode, so the only thing I could think of is that during PSPs driver/software update, NICs on node 07 and 08 were going down and up differently somehow making Node 02 fail.
So now during maintenance (Vendor driver/software/firmware updates, not MS Patches) I first put the node in "Pause" mode then I stop cluster service, (and change it to disabled) making sure nothing can affect the cluster.
Anders

Patch Best Practice.

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