Monthly Microsoft Patches Best Practices?

[DEWright_CA]

Is anyone aware of or has links to a document, blog, or guidance about stopping all ESRI services on a server prior to applying standard Microsoft OS patches? I am hearing from Support about informal internal information that seems to reflect this but can't find anything official.

[Joshua-Young]

I have never seen anything official from Esri about OS patching. I will say, unofficially, I patch and reboot servers running ArcGIS Enterprise in the order of database server first, then services server, and finally the portal server. I wait for each server to come back up before rebooting the next one. Over the years if I do not reboot them in that order or reboot them all at the same time, I have had ArcGIS Enterprise sometimes behave oddly until one or more of the services running the programs were restarted. 

[DEWright_CA]

Thanks @Joshua-Young that reflects very much the process I use; to ensure all the components are back up so the validation checks return good for the federation.

[GlenterpriseUK · Accepted solution]

Hi @DEWright_CA,

FYI: @Joshua-Young

Here is the documentation about the question you have: https://architecture.arcgis.com/en/framework/architecture-practices/people-process-and-governance/up...

Once you go on the “Operating System and Other Components” it says: “In all cases, it is recommended to allow the system to gracefully shut down before applying updates, as the more disruptive approach can lead to issues with data persistence components within the software, or unexpectedly stop jobs that are underway such as geoprocessing tasks.”

Regards,

Glen

[DEWright_CA]

Fascinating; not a intuitive place to put a nebulous area of documentation. I am not sure that aligns with the way it was being conveyed from support but is helpful to see something somewhere.

Thank you