[VoiceOps] Broadworks Patch Religion

[David Hiers]

We can reason all we want to about this, but there is one large area
of unknowns...

Patch release notes are imperfect, and embarrassing secrets can exist
inside companies and code; one whisper from a trusted Broadsoft
employee is enough to nudge me down the  "patch everything" (aka "open
your mouth and close your eyes") maintenance path.


David





On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 5:24 PM, Justin Randall <jrandall at comwave.net> wrote:
> My original reply still applies to patch dependencies.
>
> IMHO if one needs certain patches to address negatively impacting
> behaviour, one looks into all of the dependencies required, perform the
> appropriate lab testing, and then deploy if all lab testing and
> pre-production soak periods have passed without problems.  If there are
> any problems in testing, one has to consider which bugs/behaviours are
> worse to live with for the time being and make a judgement call.
>
> Really it's all about trade-offs, some prefer to take the extra time and
> be more thorough and others like to take extra risks to be more nimble.
>
> I'm more in favor of being as thorough as possible and taking the time
> to ensure as smooth of a patch rollout as possible to mitigate as much
> risk as possible relating to new bugs and/or unwanted behaviours.
>
> Regards,
>
> Justin Randall
> -----Original Message-----
> From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org
> [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Jason Warner
> Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 4:11 PM
> To: David Hiers; VoiceOps at voiceops.org
> Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] Broadworks Patch Religion
>
> The problem with this approach is that you get so far behind on patches
> that when you need to apply a specific patch you can't because of patch
> dependencies.  You often cannot apply only the patches you want because
> of this.  With as many patches released by Broadsoft, tracking the
> dependencies and which patches you need to apply in order to apply the
> patch(es) you need becomes problematic.  The longer you wait, the more
> problematic it becomes.
>
> -Jason Warner
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Justin Randall" <jrandall at comwave.net>
> To: "David Hiers" <hiersd at gmail.com>, VoiceOps at voiceops.org
> Sent: Wednesday, February 3, 2010 12:19:43 PM
> Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] Broadworks Patch Religion
>
> With almost any piece of vendor software, patching always carries the
> risk of introducing newer (and potentially more harmful) bugs.
>
> While Broadsoft does a good job of attempting to document the interfaces
> impacted by each patch, unless something is not working correctly in
> your deployment, it's probably best to go by the approach of "if it
> isn't broken, don't fix it".  I know they have an N-2 support policy but
> this is main release and service pack based so it's not like you
> couldn't get support or further patches for your issues because you
> haven't installed the latest patch bundle or AP.
>
> AFAIK on R16 you don't even need to upgrade SPs at all and can simply
> stick with the R16 main release and add whichever patches you require.
>
> Regards,
>
> Justin Randall
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org
> [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of David Hiers
> Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 3:00 PM
> To: VoiceOps at voiceops.org
> Subject: [VoiceOps] Broadworks Patch Religion
>
> For our entire history with BW, we've carefully researched and
> selected individual patches to apply based on the functions that we
> use and the issues that we see.
>
> BW explicitly states that "customers can pick and choose the patches
> they want", and they make it easy for us to do so.  This process has
> worked quite well for us so far.  It takes a good deal of effort to
> keep up with over 1 patch per day across the entire BW universe of
> products, but we've done it and had good results.
>
> Recently, the "open you mouth and close your eyes" idea has been
> advanced, in which we would apply ALL patches, regardless of function
> or issue.  We'd wait 30 days or so to let everyone else find the
> problems with the contents of the default patch bundle, then just slap
> the bundle on without any thinking.  We'd still test like chimps on
> crack after patching, of course.
>
> Are you picky or promiscuous with your BW patches?
>
> Since this discussion is very vendor/version specific, we run BW R14sp9.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> David Hiers
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