[c-nsp] When do you upgrade IOS?

[Rick Martin]

We are looking at our internal processes and we do not have a documented process for IOS upgrades. I am interested in learning what drives other enterprise network techs or engineers to upgrade IOS. Our current undocumented process is to only upgrade routers and switches that support mission critical applications when driven to by one of the following;


1.    Security vulnerability

2.    Known or discovered bug that has potential of, or is currently, impacting the device

3.    Feature enhancement for required or desirable feature.

Beyond these we typically do not upgrade code on network devices that support mission critical applications that we host. When we do run into one of the triggers above we typically evaluate the risk of leaving the current IOS vrs the impact of an outage while the code is upgraded and we base a "go/no go" decision on that.

So my questions are;


1.    What drives you to upgrade code on critical routers & switches?

2.    Do you upgrade code on a fixed schedule if not driven to by some other immediate requirement?


Thanks for any info you can provide

Rick Martin
Network Architect
State of Arkansas, Department of Information Systems