automatic nightly updates

[Jesse Keating]

On Mon, 2005-04-25 at 14:02 -0400, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> What about a cluster of 50+ webservers?
> 
> I think part of this discussion needs to define what is applicable and
> what isn't.  As has been previously stated there are cases when
> auto-update doesn't apply, i.e. complex database servers, etc.
> However
> for every case that can be made against auto-update, there is an
> alternate case for auto-update.  Think of an enterprise with 1500
> desktop PCs all around the world.  Who is going to visit all locations
> to update?  What about webserver farms?  How about distributed
> internal
> DNS/NIS servers where the loss of one system isn't critical?  etc,
> etc.
> 
> People need to understand that every environment is unique and what
> doesn't work in one instance may very well work very well in another.

These scenarios are where you run internal update servers.  You have a
test lab that you use to validate upstream updates, then you populate
your internal update systems with these updates.  In these environments
you also have scheduled times for updates, in case of breakage or
reboots.  You make it work.  I have yet to see a scenario where
automatic updates direct from the upstream vendor is a Good Idea on
production systems.

-- 
Jesse Keating RHCE      (geek.j2solutions.net)
Fedora Legacy Team      (www.fedoralegacy.org)
GPG Public Key          (geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)
 
Was I helpful?  Let others know:
 http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=jkeating