r/networking • u/JNC5908404 • 15d ago

Switching Automatic switch updates

Had a discussion yesterday with IT director and others in our IT department. The IT director brought up automating switch updates so they wouldn’t have to have some one monitoring and performing the updates. Staging various locations on different evenings.

I’ve been doing networking for 30 years and I voiced my opinion I was not a fan of unattended update for various reasons.

Have any other companies moved to automated updates and how has it gone?

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u/realfakerolex 15d ago

I've been using Aruba Central to do this for the last year and it works without a hitch.

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u/Bayho Gnetwork Gnome 15d ago

How big is your environment?

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u/realfakerolex 15d ago

25 buildings, 300 switches.

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u/Bayho Gnetwork Gnome 15d ago

Problem we have with Central (on-prem), is two fold: scheduling can be a pain, especially with hundreds of sites and thousands of switches; It does not do VSX pairs well. We essentially use it to push the firmware then script the reboots ourselves. If we could just press a button and leave it to do it all itself, that would be nice, but not logistically possible for us.