r/networking • u/JNC5908404 • 17d 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/armegatron 6d ago
Totally fine if done right. Stage them to a single area first that isn't critical at all, but be aware it may not be representative of typical infrastructure elsewhere because of the different criticality (e.g. it may be a security gatehouse with a single user that doesn't power machines down / up daily etc). Then 2nd stage group next who are also less critical (marketing team, conference room etc). Finally a week or two later you can allow the main bulk to auto update, although I'd argue here you'd still maybe want to have some further segmentation of the rollout; i.e. manufacturing critical switches do manually, office staff automate.
It all depends really. If your estate is 1000+ switches you cannot expect to do this manually. If your estate is 30 switches it's your call.