List out the Servers which are in scope for patching.It’s recommended to perform Windows patching on a monthly basis, not by quarterly.There are a couple of points, that we need to consider while preparing a schedule to line up it with agreed downtime.īellow scenario is describing based on the downtime method (3) mentioned in the above section of “Server Downtime”. Or Another example – First week after second Tuesday à (Week 1) DEV, (Week 2) UAT, (Week 3 ) Production, (Week 4) DR (DR week can be the first week of the upcoming month).Īs mentioned above, getting downtime is always a challenging task for all administrators.For example – Second Friday (DEV), Second Saturday (UAT), Third Saturday (Production) and Fourth Saturday This window should be agreed on by all business units. Or Standard four hours patching window, which is only approved to perform patching activity.

Servers can be restarted within the provided Standard maintenance window. Weekday post business hours (10 PM – 3 AM) and weekend for production and DR environment. Example – Standard maintenance window for DEV and UAT environment during We can utilize the same window for patching. There are a couple of organizations which follow the standard maintenance window of the environment.

Follow the standard maintenance window.

Few of the methods which can be used mentioned below.!īy following one of this method you can reduce the efforts which we add for getting downtime for business. Every organization handles it differently, based on business approval. Many of us are experiencing issues while getting downtime for business. For application patching separate test needs to be carried by application specialist before deployment to production environment.ĭowntime is the key factor in entire patching activity. like Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, SQL etc. This article covers for the Windows Server environment and applicable for Operating System patching - like Windows Server 2008, 2012, 2016, this will not cover for installed Microsoft or any other application on servers Windows Server Administrators and the people who follow server patching via any patching tool available in the market. This may help to organize/structure the patching activity in your organization. I am taking this opportunity to share the best practices which I have followed while performing Windows Patching. Most of the struggle is not because of technical challenges, but it’s due to operational challenges,įor example, server downtime, scheduling, change management etc. Writing this article, because we have seen many administrators struggle to accomplish patching activity into own organization or in a customer environment. It also helps to fix identified bugs in the previous version and improve stability and performance. As we all know applying security/cumulative updated in the Windows environment is very important to secure the environment from external attack.

Sccm patch deployment best practices