November 21, 2016

Windows updates: an update

Last Tuesday, November 15, many CLASSE-managed Windows computers rebooted between 8:00 AM and 9:00 AM because of third-party software updates. This disruption was unintentional, and it appears to have been a consequence of the previously mentioned changes to Microsoft's Windows update mechanism and how it interacts with our computer management software. We are currently designing and testing a long-term solution to this problem.

For now, we have made the following changes:

• The Tuesday morning update period has been truncated to 7 AM. There should be no reboots after 7 AM.
• When a reboot is required, we have found a way to increase the warning time from 1 minute to 20 minutes, and now the following message will be displayed "Reboot required for 3rd party patches. Please save your work. Puppet will reboot Windows in 20 minutes. You can also manually reboot before then."

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General network and server maintenance will occur every Tuesday from 12:00 noon to 2:00 PM. The CLASSE-IT group will always announce any expected disruptions in our NewsLetter and via CLASSE-IT-NEWS-L, but with the size and complexity of our network there is always the potential for something to go wrong. We will do our best to contain all network maintenance and planned outages to Tuesdays from 12:00 noon to 2:00 PM.

Unless other arrangements have been made, CLASSE-managed Windows systems may be updated and rebooted on Tuesday morning at 2:00 AM, so please avoid critical or lengthy operations at that time. For more details, please see SystemExpectations.

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Questions or problems? Submit a service request.

Other resources:

• CLASSE-IT Home Page
• Previous newsletters

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