Testing patches in VMware ESX?

[penguinroundup]

in light of the recent ESX 3.5 update 2 debacle --

what (if any) testing plan do you have for testing ESX patches in your production environment?

1. do you just install patches as they are released?
2. do you wait a specified time period after release to install?
3. install on one server, see how it does, then install on the rest?

do you have any testing scripts or lists/plans that you iterate through to make sure a patch is "acceptable" for production?

we're getting ready to upgrade our 2.5 to 3.5 and patching is a serious concern that I have for a production environment. I'm wondering what other virtualized environments are doing to handle these issues?

thanks for any advice or experiences you can give!
ACausemaker

 

[Provogeek]

the recent licensing issue that came up I would expect to be out side of any testing scope used by VMWare Customer (but should have been tested by VMWare QA before the product was released).

Me? I normally go with option 3 with a tad of option 2, wait a month after rlease. Do an install on a single server, wait a couple days then do the rest, then tell the client to call me in the morning if they have any issues. It typically takes me about one working week to deploy updates to a clients system since I only do one per day. Depends on how many nodes and VMs are in the environment.

Normally have my own systems on the bleeding edge of the software releases, but can't see all the problems since I can't get the bleeding edge hardware my customers have. Can't focus to much time on the testing, since testing is done on my own time after hours. So I normally depend on haveing the email notifications up, and have a few flavors of VM's running. This would be different OS's running different services that either tax memory, tax CPU, tax disk, or tax LAN. Then sit down and wait for any notifications of a failure in a VM or host.

This is the lazy way out, as it will never catch anything too serious, it will only catch the obvious flaws. Waiting the month after release allows the shops that do have time to do the testing, to test the patch, as well as VMwares own QA team to test fixes that get released to correct flaws reported to tech support when an update is released.

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Brent Schmidt SPOOOOON!!!!!
Senior Network Engineer
Keep IT Simple

http://www.kiscc.com

 

[ArizonaGeek]

I have a non production ESX server that I apply all patches to and I'll use that for about a month or so then install on production if there are no issues.

Cheers
Rob

The answer is always "PEBKAC!