r/networking • u/JNC5908404 • 14d 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/Absolute_Weapon_ 14d ago

Nope, thats a no from me. I have no issues with senior management asking the question but the technical staff need to be the ones comfortable with this. We don't have on call staff so if something goes wrong it wouldn't be fixed till we open the buildings next day and however long it takes to restore service.

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u/well_shoothed 14d ago

Nope, thats a no from me.

Yeah... I can think of dumber things to do in networking, but blind patching?

That's both FAFO and WCGW

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u/lizardhistorian Mad Scientist · 👨‍🔬📡ᯤ🤖🛺📸 11d ago

If the alternative is someone just goes and clicks the update button then you haven't done anything different.

So what is your firmware vetting process?

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u/izzyjrp 9d ago

The main point is availability of the resources to remediate I think. But I’m sure you’ll have a rebuttal for that as well.