With almost any piece of vendor software, patching always carries the risk of introducing newer (and potentially more harmful) bugs. While Broadsoft does a good job of attempting to document the interfaces impacted by each patch, unless something is not working correctly in your deployment, it's probably best to go by the approach of "if it isn't broken, don't fix it". I know they have an N-2 support policy but this is main release and service pack based so it's not like you couldn't get support or further patches for your issues because you haven't installed the latest patch bundle or AP. AFAIK on R16 you don't even need to upgrade SPs at all and can simply stick with the R16 main release and add whichever patches you require. Regards, Justin Randall -----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of David Hiers Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 3:00 PM To: VoiceOps at voiceops.org Subject: [VoiceOps] Broadworks Patch Religion For our entire history with BW, we've carefully researched and selected individual patches to apply based on the functions that we use and the issues that we see. BW explicitly states that "customers can pick and choose the patches they want", and they make it easy for us to do so. This process has worked quite well for us so far. It takes a good deal of effort to keep up with over 1 patch per day across the entire BW universe of products, but we've done it and had good results. Recently, the "open you mouth and close your eyes" idea has been advanced, in which we would apply ALL patches, regardless of function or issue. We'd wait 30 days or so to let everyone else find the problems with the contents of the default patch bundle, then just slap the bundle on without any thinking. We'd still test like chimps on crack after patching, of course. Are you picky or promiscuous with your BW patches? Since this discussion is very vendor/version specific, we run BW R14sp9. Thanks, David Hiers _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
My recommendation is to at least apply the critical patches. Work your way through the non-critical patches. BTW, today Broadsoft released a new critical patch based on a bug that was discovered over the weekend on our platform. We are running R14.SP9. The issue is related to the Execution Server Process not starting if Alternate Trunk ID is assigned to any users. The trickle down effect is it will also corrupt Trunk Group Identity assigned to all your Trunk Groups. If those users have Unscreened Calling assigned and try to place a call and send a From number that is something other than a native number in the Trunk Group the call will fail. The 'fix' is to remove the Trunk Group Identifier, apply, re-add the TGI, and apply again. AP.as.14.sp9.123.ap106079 AP.as.15.sp2.177.ap106079 AP.as.16.0.618.ap106079 AP.as.16.sp1.175.ap106079 On Feb 3, 2010, at 1:19 PM, Justin Randall wrote:
With almost any piece of vendor software, patching always carries the risk of introducing newer (and potentially more harmful) bugs.
While Broadsoft does a good job of attempting to document the interfaces impacted by each patch, unless something is not working correctly in your deployment, it's probably best to go by the approach of "if it isn't broken, don't fix it". I know they have an N-2 support policy but this is main release and service pack based so it's not like you couldn't get support or further patches for your issues because you haven't installed the latest patch bundle or AP.
AFAIK on R16 you don't even need to upgrade SPs at all and can simply stick with the R16 main release and add whichever patches you require.
Regards,
Justin Randall
-----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of David Hiers Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 3:00 PM To: VoiceOps at voiceops.org Subject: [VoiceOps] Broadworks Patch Religion
For our entire history with BW, we've carefully researched and selected individual patches to apply based on the functions that we use and the issues that we see.
BW explicitly states that "customers can pick and choose the patches they want", and they make it easy for us to do so. This process has worked quite well for us so far. It takes a good deal of effort to keep up with over 1 patch per day across the entire BW universe of products, but we've done it and had good results.
Recently, the "open you mouth and close your eyes" idea has been advanced, in which we would apply ALL patches, regardless of function or issue. We'd wait 30 days or so to let everyone else find the problems with the contents of the default patch bundle, then just slap the bundle on without any thinking. We'd still test like chimps on crack after patching, of course.
Are you picky or promiscuous with your BW patches?
Since this discussion is very vendor/version specific, we run BW R14sp9.
Thanks,
David Hiers _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
The problem with this approach is that you get so far behind on patches that when you need to apply a specific patch you can't because of patch dependencies. You often cannot apply only the patches you want because of this. With as many patches released by Broadsoft, tracking the dependencies and which patches you need to apply in order to apply the patch(es) you need becomes problematic. The longer you wait, the more problematic it becomes. -Jason Warner ----- Original Message ----- From: "Justin Randall" <jrandall at comwave.net> To: "David Hiers" <hiersd at gmail.com>, VoiceOps at voiceops.org Sent: Wednesday, February 3, 2010 12:19:43 PM Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] Broadworks Patch Religion With almost any piece of vendor software, patching always carries the risk of introducing newer (and potentially more harmful) bugs. While Broadsoft does a good job of attempting to document the interfaces impacted by each patch, unless something is not working correctly in your deployment, it's probably best to go by the approach of "if it isn't broken, don't fix it". I know they have an N-2 support policy but this is main release and service pack based so it's not like you couldn't get support or further patches for your issues because you haven't installed the latest patch bundle or AP. AFAIK on R16 you don't even need to upgrade SPs at all and can simply stick with the R16 main release and add whichever patches you require. Regards, Justin Randall -----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of David Hiers Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 3:00 PM To: VoiceOps at voiceops.org Subject: [VoiceOps] Broadworks Patch Religion For our entire history with BW, we've carefully researched and selected individual patches to apply based on the functions that we use and the issues that we see. BW explicitly states that "customers can pick and choose the patches they want", and they make it easy for us to do so. This process has worked quite well for us so far. It takes a good deal of effort to keep up with over 1 patch per day across the entire BW universe of products, but we've done it and had good results. Recently, the "open you mouth and close your eyes" idea has been advanced, in which we would apply ALL patches, regardless of function or issue. We'd wait 30 days or so to let everyone else find the problems with the contents of the default patch bundle, then just slap the bundle on without any thinking. We'd still test like chimps on crack after patching, of course. Are you picky or promiscuous with your BW patches? Since this discussion is very vendor/version specific, we run BW R14sp9. Thanks, David Hiers _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
The problem with this approach is R16 main release and R16.SP1 will be end of maintenance on October 31, 2010. There are additional R16 SP releases planned this year and you will need to be on one of those to continue patching your system. On Feb 3, 2010, at 1:19 PM, Justin Randall wrote:
AFAIK on R16 you don't even need to upgrade SPs at all and can simply stick with the R16 main release and add whichever patches you require.
Regards,
Justin Randall
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