Summary
Patches, upgrades, and decommissions are not very exciting parts of a system administrator's daily routine. Too often, system administrators ignore these basic system maintenance functions or perform them casually. As this chapter has explained, all changes to a Unix network require careful planning, testing, end-user education, implementation, and follow-up support. To plan and implement a successful system upgrade or decommission, follow these general rules:
Read all vendor documentation.
Know who is using the services on your network.
Test everything in a sandbox environment first. If you don't have a sandbox, lobby for one using the argument previously discussed.
Notify users and management of upcoming changes.
Back up your systems completely ...
Get Unix® System Management Primer Plus now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
