Best Practices

My philosophy is to start small and work my way up...meaning, I'll start with 1 test machine and once I feel that is good, then I test with 3-5 production machines. The size of your environment should correlate how big of a test group you get to.

With this sort of testing, I use a manual label and apply it to the specific machines I am using. - jfrank 9 years ago

Right now I have about 8 machines, covering all my models, with users that are higher-level than most and more likely to use the products being patched. - rockhead44 9 years ago

Use a small group (10 systems). make sure you have 2 tasks. One to detect and one to deploy. Run them a few hours apart. Make sure you are allowing for reboots as well. If a system needs to reboot it may not show a successful patch as deployed till it does. - Ty 9 years ago

When learning to use the K1, I had about 65 virtual servers in remote locations I wanted to start patching. After creating a patch policy with the updates I needed, I tested on a server in my office with a like configuration. Once working okay on the test rig I gave it a go on a few live servers over the course of a week. Once comfortable I setup a patching schedule that does around 10-15 servers per night Sun-Thurs (so support will be available the next morning if something fails). - k1000-chan 9 years ago