Weekly Tech Tidbit -Reboot before Updates

April 19th, 2019
Weekly Tech Tidbit -Reboot before Updates

Another short and sweet tidbit.

When you are installing software, updates, patches, etc., reboot your server.   I can't tell you the number of times that my "updates" fail because there is a "pending restart" from a previous update.

If your update fails after the reboot, it is the update that is the issue.  If you haven't rebooted, who knows who is at fault.

Also depending upon your environment remember a couple of other common sense tips that we all forget:

  • Make sure you have good backups before major changes.
  • Depending upon your environment you might want a VMware snapsot or a SAN snapshot to give you some wiggle room if the update goes bad.  Remember you can't add space while a VMware snapshot is in effect so evaluate your space needs before taking a snapshot.
  • If possible, please turn off your anti-virus so that it doesn't interfere with the updates.  Recently we have seen Exchange updates and a few other major updates blow up solely becuase Trend wasn't disabled before the updates were started.
  • If you did a VMware snapshot before the update, please remember to go back and delete/consolidate the snapshot after you are confident the updates are done and working fine.