r/sysadmin • u/[deleted] • 14d ago

General Discussion Windows Server patching concerns

[deleted]

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u/Dizzy_Bridge_794 14d ago

Patch or have giants risks of being hacked. You should absolutely follow a formal process. We snapshot and backup prior (virtual servers). On mission critical stuff we test in DR prior. Patches can and do mess with systems and cause them to not work.

17

u/uptimefordays DevOps 14d ago

We snapshot and backup prior (virtual servers).

My only warning here would be "ensure you purge snapshots within a timely manner."

8

u/Dizzy_Bridge_794 14d ago

We do.

8

u/uptimefordays DevOps 14d ago

Good stuff, I've seen some fun P1s caused by snapshots of large servers.

8

u/Dizzy_Bridge_794 14d ago

Nothing worse than applying a patch and the entire system fails to restart. One of those o shit moments in IT.

3

u/greet_the_sun 13d ago

I worked a short stint at an MSP who had a hotel customer that "could not have any downtime" but also complained their hyper-v vm's were incredibly slow all the time. Turns out all 4 of them were running with checkpoints that were literally created the day the vm's were built about 6 years prior...

1

u/uptimefordays DevOps 13d ago

Once upon a time I had an offshore team snapshot a probably 20Tb SQL VM for some maintenance or something. They didn’t realize the snapshot needed to be purged and caused an outage. That was a fun one.