driver Update procdure question and advice

[Adam Raff]

Good Day,

We have three HP Prolient servers that are all in production. All are
Windows 2003 Enterprise with SP1. File/Print, SQL and Exchange. The drive
config is Mirrored OS and Data Raided5.

I do all my updates such as windows updates and the such to keep my servers
up to date but a few days ago something happened. One of my systems had a
problem. You see, I do a yearly maintenance on the servers once a year and
install/update the drivers with a HP's PSP (Prolient Service Pack) this is a
package that HP puts out that updates all the drivers. Then I update any
firmware in the system that needs it. The reason is the typical reason, if
I do not upgrade and I have a problem and call HP they ask me did you run
the latest PSP and you know the rest. Anyway I am usually very careful in
my updates and follow a procedure such as calling the vendor and talking to
tech support about any issues the PSP may have and I wait a while before
applying, making sure that the update has been out for some time. Any way
to make a long store shout it seems that after applying the update my backup
software went south which caused my tape drive to fail and I was not able to
shut the system down cleanly as it got stuck. I was able to fix the problem
and all is well.

Now I want a way to allow me to update my servers, but not take the risk
that I did. As I found that even a safe update, can turn into a disaster.

My thought was to pop out one of the mirrored drives, do the install see if
it all works then reinstall the drive again. If the system bombed out then
I can just shut the system down put the drive back in and pull out the bad
drive. When we upgraded our servers from 2000 to 2003 that is what our
consultants did which I thought was a great idea.

I would like to know how other people handle these things, so perhaps I can
get some other ideas on this topic.

Thanks
Adam Raff

 

[Vincent Xu [MSFT]]

Hi ,

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--------------------

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Good Day,

We have three HP Prolient servers that are all in production. All are
Windows 2003 Enterprise with SP1. File/Print, SQL and Exchange. The drive
config is Mirrored OS and Data Raided5.

I do all my updates such as windows updates and the such to keep my servers
up to date but a few days ago something happened. One of my systems had a
problem. You see, I do a yearly maintenance on the servers once a year and
install/update the drivers with a HP's PSP (Prolient Service Pack) this is a
package that HP puts out that updates all the drivers. Then I update any
firmware in the system that needs it. The reason is the typical reason, if
I do not upgrade and I have a problem and call HP they ask me did you run
the latest PSP and you know the rest. Anyway I am usually very careful in
my updates and follow a procedure such as calling the vendor and talking to
tech support about any issues the PSP may have and I wait a while before
applying, making sure that the update has been out for some time. Any way
to make a long store shout it seems that after applying the update my backup
software went south which caused my tape drive to fail and I was not able to
shut the system down cleanly as it got stuck. I was able to fix the problem
and all is well.

Now I want a way to allow me to update my servers, but not take the risk
that I did. As I found that even a safe update, can turn into a disaster.

My thought was to pop out one of the mirrored drives, do the install see if
it all works then reinstall the drive again. If the system bombed out then
I can just shut the system down put the drive back in and pull out the bad
drive. When we upgraded our servers from 2000 to 2003 that is what our
consultants did which I thought was a great idea.

I would like to know how other people handle these things, so perhaps I can
get some other ideas on this topic.

Thanks
Adam Raff

Your idea is good and it will save you a lot of trouble. Many
server administrators do not bother with such precautions - they
go ahead even with major upgrades such as service pack installations,
then assess the damage when the server failes to start.

Here are some observations:

- When you start the server on your mirror disk (rather than the
main disk) then you must probably boot it with a boot floppy.

- Rebuilding the main disk from a mirror disk can be tricky - the
server may refuse to boot. To be on the safe side you should
go through a full practice run and document the steps you took.

- Instead of breaking a mirror, you could take an image of the
system disk prior to the installation, using a product such
as Acronis True Image. Not cheap but much cheaper than a
server rebuild. Again you must test the image to be sure that
it works.

- I have successfully traded out of several very tight spots by
using a recent backup copy of the registry. I create a new one
each week under the Task Scheduler and I restore it (when
all else fails) by booting the machine with a Bart PE boot CD.
This is the closest I can get to the WinXP System Restore
facility. Simple but very effective (but it won't restore modified
driver files, of course).

 

[Adam Raff]

Pegasus,

Thank you for your input, I posted to this group to get some ideas what
other people do in my situation, Never thought that this group was setup
just for break/fix issues. I also thought that it was also used to share
ideas on how to do things.

Nerveless, this is what we did last time which I believe will work again.
On our mirror disk set. I believe we popped out the drive before the server
boots up, then I can just start the system. The server will give a warning
but continue to boot. I believe I can then do my install and reboot. If
all works out and the system starts up I can then shut down the system and
pop the other drive back into the drive bay and let the mirror drive rebuild
itself. I need to follow up with HP on this to make sure that the plan will
work but we did it before when we upgraded our servers from 2000 to 2003
with no issues.

Not sure if a image will work as I am not sure how to boot the image if it
breaks down. This is also an Exchange server. You brought up Acronis True
Image is this a good product or a great product? Is it easy to setup?

The boot Cd is a great idea never thought to use that, I have been looking
at Winternals Administrator Pak which allows you to boot up a dead system.
Could not save a systemstate somehow perhaps to CD or Hard disk since that
also has registry. Is there a command just to backup the registry?

Again thanks for your input on this

Adam Raff

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

See below.

Pegasus,

Thank you for your input, I posted to this group to get some ideas what
other people do in my situation, Never thought that this group was setup
just for break/fix issues. I also thought that it was also used to share
ideas on how to do things.

I read Vincent Xu's note but I don't really agree with it.

Nerveless, this is what we did last time which I believe will work again.
On our mirror disk set. I believe we popped out the drive before the server
boots up, then I can just start the system. The server will give a warning
but continue to boot. I believe I can then do my install and reboot. If
all works out and the system starts up I can then shut down the system and
pop the other drive back into the drive bay and let the mirror drive rebuild
itself. I need to follow up with HP on this to make sure that the plan will
work but we did it before when we upgraded our servers from 2000 to 2003
with no issues.

Not sure if a image will work as I am not sure how to boot the image if it
breaks down. This is also an Exchange server. You brought up Acronis True
Image is this a good product or a great product? Is it easy to setup?

Acronis products have matured a lot in recent years and are
now very easy to install and to configure. Furthermore they
have an option to make a boot CD, thus enabling you to restore
an image onto a blank disk.

The boot Cd is a great idea never thought to use that, I have been looking
at Winternals Administrator Pak which allows you to boot up a dead system.
Could not save a systemstate somehow perhaps to CD or Hard disk since that
also has registry. Is there a command just to backup the registry?

You can back up the system state with ntbackup.exe, then store it
on a CD. However, if your machine won't start because of a registry
problem then you have a rare time extracting the registry files from
the .bkf file made by ntbackup. Furthermore you will need a boot
CD that can write data on NTFS partitions.

My machines run the batch file below once every week to back up the
registry:

@echo off
if exist %SystemRoot%\Repair\Prev rd %SystemRoot%\Repair\Prev /s /q
if exist %SystemRoot%\Repair\Curr ren %SystemRoot%\Repair\Curr Prev
md %SystemRoot%\Repair\Curr
regback %SystemRoot%\Repair\Curr > "%temp%\regback.tmp"

regback.exe will warn you that it did not back up the various user hives.
You could back them up too with some extra coding but I do not think
it necessary. You can download regaback.exe from some Microsoft sites.

Again thanks for your input on this

You're welcome.