[Tony]

Hey all,

In light of my recent discovery that while we're only on SP6 patch 1 of Gateway and patch 7 was just released, I'm hoping to find out what other users do in terms of patch/service pack installation and planning. Since we're expecting Service Pack 7 the last week of December, I was looking on the support site to see what was out there, and realized that we haven't established any sort of "best practices" surrounding installation of service packs and patches. As such, I was hoping folks might be able to provide insight on the following questions -

1. How are you notified about patches/service packs? If you proactively check the website, how often do you do so?

2. How do you make decisions about which patches/service packs to install. Do you install them all?

3. Do you take any special measures to mitigate risk when installing patches/service packs? (Outside of standard testing in whichever environments you have available)

Thanks in advance, I'm looking forward to getting some insight from other users on what's come up unexpectedly as a topic of question/need for documentation and process modeling.

Tony

[cheimann]

Hi Tony,
its possible to get a email notificatin on the site http://xxxx.xxx.xxx/ ( url has been masked by a moderator because it's an internal application ).
Then you will get a mail if any patch or SP will arrive in GA on there.
About using the patches: Its difficult to decide which one you have to use. Normally in a plane installation we use the last one, but in an existing productive environment we check in the release notes if something was fixed what we need. If not, we stay as long as possible with the last stable SP or patch.
About the risk of a patch or SP: Test it first!!

Hope that this helps a bit...

Christian Heimann
Senior Consultant
Axway Frankfurt

Hey all,

In light of my recent discovery that while we're only on SP6 patch 1 of Gateway and patch 7 was just released, I'm hoping to find out what other users do in terms of patch/service pack installation and planning. Since we're expecting Service Pack 7 the last week of December, I was looking on the support site to see what was out there, and realized that we haven't established any sort of "best practices" surrounding installation of service packs and patches. As such, I was hoping folks might be able to provide insight on the following questions -

1. How are you notified about patches/service packs? If you proactively check the website, how often do you do so?

2. How do you make decisions about which patches/service packs to install. Do you install them all?

3. Do you take any special measures to mitigate risk when installing patches/service packs? (Outside of standard testing in whichever environments you have available)

Thanks in advance, I'm looking forward to getting some insight from other users on what's come up unexpectedly as a topic of question/need for documentation and process modeling.

Tony

Reason for edit: give an internal link

[Mario128]

Hi

This url is an internal application only for Axway employees.

Customers can not reach this website.

But they can subscribe to a RSS flow from the support website and have notifications for new Patches and Service Packs

Raphaël

[psamman]

Hi Tony

Allow me an illustrated answer

2. How do you make decisions about which patches/service packs to install. Do you install them all?
=> To solve a problem only! If ain't broken, don't fix it!!!
Last one: our firewall does not support dynamic FTP data ports between DMZ (XSR) and intranet
-> fixed in SP6=> tests reveal a packet length decoding problem between our Gateway 6.9.1 and XSR RA 2.1.0 (SP6 requires us to update XSR Router Agent to v2.1.0 - we had v1.1)
-> Fixed in Patch7 (Gateway 6.9.1) : tests OK
-> Shopping results: install SP6+Patch7 and XSR RA 2.1.0

1. How are you notified about patches/service packs? If you proactively check the website, how often do you do so?
=> I check the support website.
Not regularly, but in the days before I have to apply a new Patch (to see if new fixes came out).
I had to apply SP6/Patch7 and looked up the support web site and found two new updates:
-> Happy end: SP7, fixed many SFTP problems, and we just bought a new license for SFTP. Tested OK in test environment.
-> Errrr: XSR RA 2.1.0 Patch3: tests revealed a communication problem between Gateway 6.9.1 SP7 and XSR RA 2.1.0 Patch3: Init(3) XSR error message too large (size -1807388046 while max size is 1024). Patch3 rollback solved the problem. So no Patch3.

3. Do you take any special measures to mitigate risk when installing patches/service packs? (Outside of standard testing in whichever environments you have available)
=> Testing of course + complete backup of the entire tree before any installation and after each installation (+ the rollback facility of the installer).


Isn't it exciting to work with computers?!

[kpolicoff]

As far as best practices for installing service packs, I agree with the routine of backing up everything and then applying patches. While you can roll back a patch, it's always a safe bet to make sure you have a fallback in case something goes wrong.

When it comes to which patches to install, it is true... if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Now, patches do fix issues, yes, but if a patch was released to fix an issue with a feature that's not being utilized in your environment, there's not much of a reason to patch to it. When you see a new patch that's been released, I'd take a look at the release notes. If there's an issue that's been fixed, and you feel you might encounter that issue (or you already are), you might want to consider patching. If the fix does not apply to you, it might be best to leave it as is.

Now, as far as testing goes, this is important. If you don't patch frequently, and you find that a patch that's several patches out (or a service pack for that matter) has been released with a fix for something that you are interested in, there are most likely many other fixes that have been put in place since patches are cumulative. Being that such a scenario will make multiple changes to the application, you want to make sure that you test this new patch as close to your production environment as possible. You might not run into all possible issues if you're only testing a small portion of what you do in production. The last thing you want to do is patch a QA box, test 1/4 of your prod functionality, and then roll that patch into your prod. Especially when it comes to Gateway, there are many different configuration options, and you might have something configured that was not tested on our side exactly as you have it setup on your side. Know your configuration, and test it as thoroughly as possible before rolling to prod.

[genroxbro]

I cant remember what site or forum I read it on, and I dont seem to be able to find it by doing searches, but I recently read a post about someone purchasing a new Castle Service Pack that came with foliage. Can anyone confirm this for me, and/or tell me where I can find information about Service Packs? I dont see anything about them on the LEGO site.

Thanks.
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