HP UX Patch Management Consideration of HP patch rating, Patch management and software depots

hours, and provide an efficient way to back out changes if necessary. See Chapter 9 (page 86) for more details.

Table 4-2 Recommendations based on strategy

Strategy	OS & Applications	Proactive Patching	Reactive Patching	Change	Test Environment
				Management
Restrictive	Stable release,	Use only	Make fewest	Formal plan with	Dedicated
	available for one	thoroughly tested	changes possible	explicit roles and	equipment that
	year or more.	patches with the	to restore	responsibilities.	matches
		highest level of	function.	Prepared plan to	production
		exposure.			environment,
			Perform full	back out changes,
			diagnostic	if necessary.	including
					simulated loads.
			analysis before	Documented
			attempting a
				disaster recovery
			solution.
				plan that is
				updated and
				tested at least
				yearly.
Conservative	Stable release,	Use only	Make fewest	Formal plan with	Dedicated
	available for six	thoroughly tested	changes possible	explicit roles and	equipment that
	months or more.	patches with	to restore	responsibilities.	matches
		substantial	function.	Prepared plan to	production
		exposure.			environment.
			Perform full	back out changes,
			diagnostic	if necessary.
			analysis before
			attempting a
			solution.

Innovative	Stable release,	Carefully review	Focus on
	available for two	patches for risks	restoration of
	months or more.	and benefits.	function.
			Limit number of
			concurrent
			changes.

Established roles	Test or
and	development
responsibilities.	equipment or off
	hours on
	production
	environment.

Consideration of HP patch rating

Regardless of the type of patching strategy you choose to implement, you should include a policy detailing when it is appropriate to select patches for each HP patch rating. Based on rating alone, it is always appropriate to select a patch rating of 3, but under what circumstances will you allow patches rated 2 or 1 to be installed?

For more information about HP patch ratings, see “HP-UX patch ratings” (page 34).

Patch management and software depots

Users with multiple systems generally find that, regardless of the type of patching strategy they choose to implement, patch management is best accomplished by managing patches in centralized software depots. You should maintain one depot for each set of similarly configured systems.

You then use these depots as your patch source for all patch installations. In this way, you can maintain the same patch level on all the systems with less overall effort. Using depots also minimizes reboots when you install new patches. You should be able to install the entire content of a single depot with only a single reboot.

For more information about these SD-UX software depots, see Chapter 7: “Using software depots for patch management” (page 64).

Patch management and software change management strategies 47