We don’t really have a dedicated SharePoint Administrator so we’re trying to figure out how often we should be applying SharePoint patches or cumulative updates to our farm.
In your opinion, is it better to:
- Apply them right away whenever they come out
- Wait until a couple come out and then apply them on a -2 schedule
- Wait until a service pack comes out and apply them all at once
- Only apply a patch if it fixes a specific issue that you are experiencing or a potential security threat
- If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – don’t do anything until you upgrade to SharePoint vNext
A combination of 3 & 4 seems to work.
Also perform these on your other stacks before updating your production environments.
Updating when cumulative updates come out is far too much hassle in terms of testing required for it to be beneficial in most cases, particularly environments which are not publicly facing.
Having said that, this should all be agreed by your management, and you should follow the security/governance policy, whatever that is.
Combination of 3 and 4 for me in the case of ongoing maintenance, although for a new install, I go with whatever Todd Klindt says, as others have already mentioned.
That said, I tend to read up on each CU when it comes out, to see if there are any useful fixes, e.g. performance improvements, etc. just in case.
I agree with this approach, and I will need to look out for Todd’s stamps. 🙂
I agree with:
“even if pushed to a test environment first some of the issues may be missed and will only be picked up once it is used in anger in Prod by the wider user base.”
I have seen a many “test” and “prod” environments that differ way too much.
