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Upgrade time: do you haver a policy?

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by palmerm

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In a recent discussion with a Net Engineer who wanted to upgrade a PDC to W2K, I voiced that upgrading the servers needs to happen during non-business hours. His view was that it was "safe" to do it whenever becuase we could test a promotion/demotion on a BDC and if the upgrade did go wrong we could redeploy the BDC as the PDC.

My question is this: What, if any, policies do you have on upgrading production servers with regard to the time of day? Is it at the will and whim of your network engineer or at a time when it would affect the least number of end-users?

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by timwalsh

I personnaly try to schedule a major upgrade for when it it least likely to affect users. The name of the game usually is the happier you keep your users, the less hassle you get from them. Unforunately, many engineers who have been around a whileview the network as an end unto itself, rather than what it really is - a user tool.

Your network engineer does have a point in that if something goes wrong, he does have a fallback position. The flip side is that even with a fallback position, you are still likely to suffer some server downtime. The issue really is: how much downtime is palatable to your users, and more importantly, your management?

Unfortunately, in small IT organizations, especially where management is not especially technically savvy, he who is in charge makes the rules/policies. But, I guarentee that the first time the boss can't get to his email when he wants to, the rules/policies will change.

It really depends on your user environment (i.e. how that particular server is used and how many users you have).

Hope this helps.

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