[c-nsp] OT: Enterprise (Not ISP) Maintenance Windows

[Justin M. Streiner]

On Fri, 26 Sep 2014, Scott Voll wrote:

> For those of you working in an enterprise, company, agency, etc.  Do you
> have a standard (network) maintenance windows?
>
> If so, when?  How often?  Can you schedule anything in it, or if it will
> cause an outage does it need to go through 3+ layers of meetings and buy
> off to get it approved before you can schedule it?

This is liable to be one of those questions that will get you 100 
different answers from 100 different people.

In my environment (large .edu), our standard maintenance window is 
Saturday 11 PM to Sunday AM.  That's for bigger/more complex changes that 
are more likely to have user impact (non-emergency hardware 
replacements/upgrades, code upgrades on network devices, significant 
routing policy changes, etc).

We also do routine changes nightly at 9 PM, such as VLAN/firewall zone 
creations, ACL modifications, and other changes that have well-known 
behavior and a low likelihood of user impact.

Anything outside of those windows needs to be reviewed and approved up the 
chain of command.

jms