What is involved during the maintenance windows?

Owned by Former user (Deleted)
Last updated: Jun 28, 2017
2 min read
During our scheduled maintenance windows, our team installs Windows updates and restarts the servers - no changes or launches are done during this time.
In detail, below are the stages that occur:

 

Stage 1: Web Servers
  1. Updates are performed on a pair of servers at a time - all new traffic is disabled on the pair of servers undergoing updates
  2. When the traffic level goes to zero on the pair of servers, we begin the Windows updates and restarting the servers
  3. Once these pair of servers are back up, we begin testing sites to confirm they are displaying properly on both servers (the BCF site is actually the first site we run these tests on)
  4. After we complete our tests, we enable traffic to these servers 
  5. Steps 1-4 above are then repeated for the remaining pairs of servers
  6. In the event we come across errors in our logs, traffic is disabled and the Windows updates are reverted until the issues are resolved. All servers are then rebooted in pairs.
Stage 2: SQL/Tracking Servers
  1. All new traffic is disabled in one of our datacenters
  2. When the traffic level is down to zero, we begin installing patches and rebooting these servers
  3. Once these servers are back up and running, we begin running tests on sites to ensure they are displaying properly with the updated database servers
  4. After we complete our testing, we begin enabling traffic to that datacenter
  5. Steps 1-4 above are then repeated for the remaining datacenter
  6. In the event we come across any issues, all Windows updates are reverted on these database servers
Stage 3: Indexing Servers
  1. Our primary indexing server is disabled, and enabled on a secondary server located in a different datacenter
  2. Once we confirm that all indexing processes are running successfully across our web servers, we begin running the Windows updates and rebooting the primary indexing server
  3. Once the primary indexing server is back up and running, we re-enable this as the primary indexing server
  4. We then run tests to ensure everything is running smoothly
  5. In the event we come across any issues, the Windows updates are reverted