When I was responsible for a fairly large server farm, after patching I ran DCDIAG on the DCs and netdiag on all servers. I did parse the output of the utilities. I also had a complex script that tested the health of our DCs from an LDAP perspective and all of the mail servers (with each protocol - POP, IMAP, RPC/HTTP, MAPI, HTTP) and web servers.
After 26 years, primarily in computer operations, I can say with some authority that (in my experience) what most people screw up is change management. They just don't do it. Don't understand it. Don't see the value in it. Until it bites them in the rear. Regards, Michael B. Smith MCSE/Exchange MVP http://TheEssentialExchange.com -----Original Message----- From: Kurt Buff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 6:16 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: If you're monitoring your servers thoroughly.... Chapter 18 of The Practice of System and Network Administration deals with this very topic. This chapter starts with a checklist, in 14 steps, for upgrading (including patching) servers. Chapter 17 is more fundamentally related as it deals with change management, and chapters 20 and 22 are on Maintenance Windows and Service Monitoring, respectively. If you have a comprehensive monitoring infrastructure, then probably not. However, I'll bet that you don't, *if* it's a custom app. And, just because, using your example, you run a DCDIAG, doesn't mean you've caught the problem - you will have to parse the report, or automate parsing it, and get notified that something is wrong. Kurt On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 2:25 PM, David Lum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > .do you need to really check anything after patching and rebooting? I would > think if you're already monitoring all the services, shares, disk space, > event logs, data stores, etc then patch and reboot wouldn't require much > testing per se. For DC's you could even automate a DCDIAG on every restart > and have the results shot out, right? > > > > This is a rose colored glasses look, but wondered if anyone actually pulls > this one off. > > > > Dave Lum - Systems Engineer > [EMAIL PROTECTED] - (971)-222-1025 > "When you step on the brakes your life is in your foot's hands" ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~
