When is it safe to update a task sequence?

We have a fairly busy environment, with OSD happening all the time. We have been updating our major task sequences off hours, but I wonder if that is even necessary. After testing in QA, is it safe to update the task sequence at any time without bothering
or confusing workstations that are in the middle of an OSD operation?
I think I understand that the task sequence is pulled down to the local hard drive very early in OSD, and it doesn't return to re-read the task sequence after that. Is that correct? If that's true then we don't need to worry about workstations losing their
place in the task sequence if we update it while they are executing the task sequence.
Thank you for any light others can shed on this.
Gary
Gary Knigge, Senior Systems Analyst Division of Technology Services University of Wisconsin-River Falls Wisconsin, USA

Correct, the machine downloads the task sequence at the beginning of the process and uses that cached copy throughout, so modifying the task sequence will not affect any deployments already executing.
That said, the biggest risk you face in modifying production task sequences is content. If you add a task referencing content that is not yet fully deployed and available, you will cause any subsequent executions to fail.  This is especially true of
adding new Driver Packages as there is a known issue with the content not being recognized as valid until Rev2 (you not only have to distribute it to your DPs but also subsequently update the DPs to rev the content).

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