Maintenance and Patch Strategy
Sun introduces software patch releases regularly. SunSolveSM Online, http://sunsolve.com, offers a weekly email Patch Club report service for contract customers to provide a synopsis of current patches. Your local Sun Service provider can suggest additional mail alias subscriptions to notify users of released patches and their contents. You should review the provided patch information to decide if a patch is relevant for a particular production system. For example, some patches might involve I/O interfaces not used by the system or might involve a locality that does not apply.
Sun also provides the PatchPro services available at SunSolve Online. PatchPro services offer two methods for analyzing a system to provide a recommended patch list. The Patch Pro Interactive web site uses an interactive form to obtain a description of the system and then recommends patches. PatchPro Expert software is a Java applet that can be run in a Java-enabled browser to query your system interactively and correlate the configuration to the latest patch database.
You should collect and store all relevant patches, but only apply these patches on a three- or six-month schedule to keep systems current and to minimize any outage impact. Only critical patches that affect the condition of the production system should be applied immediately.
A best practice is to always install all required or recommended patches for:
Solaris kernel update
Sun Enterprise 10000 System system service processor (SSP), system controller (SC), lights-out management (LOM and LOMlite), and remote service controller (RSC)
Sun Cluster software
Storage management software—Solstice DiskSuite, Solaris Volume Manager, Vertitas Volume Manager (VxVM), Raid Manager 6.0, and so forth
Disk controller, disk storage array, disk drive firmware
Data centers with higher availability requirements can benefit from having patches applied to a test system to help analyze their full impact and to assist in a production rollout strategy. Sun Cluster 3.0 offers a limited capability to apply patches to an operational cluster without bringing the cluster down. Contact your local Sun service provider for details.