[sims] Solus3 and Patches

[Olliesaurus]

Hello,

 

I have taken on a SIMS server that was migrated by an external company, all updates were released as and when by our LA, now that we have moved away and to Capita support our Solus3 has been inundated with patches, from all angles!

 

I am not trained in Solus3 or SIMS updates but no my way around them.

 

Is it best practice to install every patch that comes down or just cherry pick the ones you actually need?

 

Also, do patches kick everyone off the server?

 

Thanks

[minimoo]

Solus 3 is typically going to be used to deploy 4 things:

 

a) Solus itself (Solus agent + UI Console + Database + Solus Service)

b) Discover Database + Discover Client

c) FMS Database + FMS Clients

d) Sms Database + Patches + Client

 

For Solus(a) - sims typically do a release and it's very rare to see anything apart from a full release. When deploying a solus update, I tend to kick it off, then close the GUI on the server (and if i need to see how it's going check the text log files). A solus update will generally update the database, followed by console/server and then the agents. There's probably about 2 updates to this a year now. My approach is generally to kick this off to install 'whenever'.

 

b/c/d tend to have a main release at the same time 3 times a year. The full releases should be applied for the modules at the same time really, once previous census is definitely done, as each sims release is designed for a specific term's census.

 

It's very rare to have an update for Discover(b) apart from the time of the full release.

 

For FMS, again, it's generally quite rare to see an FMS database patch arrive - although there's been some recently.

 

For SIM's, Capita do seem to be pushing out database patches at a regular rate. My personal feedback to Capita on that is it's not particularly clear for us or useful - and I can't see how it can make life easy for them - as different customers are running with different combinations of patches!

 

I've set Solus3 to email me when a new patch arrives - so for database patches, the emails I get show the patch name - we tend to receive:

a) revisions of old patches (you can tell these from the name - i.e. 3.7.575-3.7.661, where we've got some previous database version. My assumption with these is that they are likely and old patch being revised, so I never apply them.

b) new patches where it only shows the latest database version, or a description. For these I've been taking the approach of if Capita have deemed it important enough to send a patch to all customers, given they have the ability to limit and time the distribution of patches, that they deem it important enough for all customers to install - therefore I will deploy the patch at some point. If Capita's description of the patch contains "only applies to schools in Northern Island", like we had this week - I will generally ignore the patch and not apply it.

 

As the database patch does not affect the client computers around the school, and will kick people off the server (database needs to switch to 'single-user' mode to perform a backup as part of applying the patch), I tend to apply these at the end of the school day.

 

For workstation patches - the situation gets trickier - as they do mean all end users get the update. These tend to be pretty rare - happening more in the against the Summer release (where sims find they need to do something for results day... like this year!). The observation I've made, and why I say it gets trickier - is these updates tend to be where Capita have been more likely to break something in the update process -> for instance, they release workstation patch 1 then withdraw it. In the past you could get into a state where you couldn't update/install sims anymore. For that reason, I would probably be inclined to suggest that if you do choose to install "Patch 1" and then a "Patch 2" arises, it would probably be sensible to update to Patch 2 regardless of whether you specifically need it or not. Equally, if you don't need the workstation patch, I'd inclined to say you have a choice between ignoring them until one arrives that you do - or updating to it so you are always on the 'latest build'