Planning patches, restarts and maintenance windows
Maintenance should have an owner, a defined objective and a way to decide whether it succeeded. A package update, operating-system upgrade and application migration carry different compatibility and rollback requirements.
Agree the change before it starts
- List affected services, target versions and dependencies; review vendor compatibility information for the exact versions.
- Confirm backup and recovery readiness, available access and any expected interruption.
- Set a maintenance window with timezone, an authorised contact and conditions for stopping or rolling back.
- Define application checks, monitoring checks and how completion will be recorded.
For managed systems, coordinate changes with us to avoid conflicting work. Some updates need a restart even when installation succeeds. Do not assume a rollback will be possible after a data-format change; test the recovery procedure for significant upgrades.
