"Emergency" Package Deployment

\"Emergency\" Package Deployment

We have been live for quite some time with our financials and have just recently implemented JDE in the first of our 6 distribution centers. Because we have heavily modified the base code to fit our business, we had several issues where we needed “emergency” package builds/deployments to correct show-stopping problems. To prevent delays for all of the users unaffected by the critical problems, we kept 2 of our 4 Citrix servers disabled at all times. Once the “hot fix” was applied to the 2 disabled units, we rotated them and had all users log off and right back on to direct them to the updated machines. The package was then deployed to the other 2 Citrix units and they were left idle waiting for the next problem. This worked well for us with only a small percentage of our employees accessing JDE through Citrix, however, the more users we bring on the system, the less effective this method will be. Because we do not have the luxury of several extra servers that can sit idle, it seems as though we will have to disrupt all users for the time it takes to deploy to all machines. If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions on how to address critical program changes with the least amount of disruption, please enlighten me.

Thanks!

Re: \"Emergency\" Package Deployment

Here is what we do. We also do not have the luxury of spare terminal servers. We have four terminal servers supporting production. We copy the updated path code to the terminal server using a different name. "PD7333_Update_01/01/02" as an example. We then disable new logins for 2 of the 4 servers and wait for the users to eventually log out (In an emergency, we'd send them a system message to "Please log out and log back in"). Change the name of the Updated path code to PD7333 and restart the servers. We then repeat these steps on the remaining TS's. This way the servers are only down as long as it takes to change the pathcode name and reboot the server and the users are completely unaware unless we force them to log out.