Upgrading Kernel

[AdamJBaldwin]

I have a question:
Is it possible for my to buy a trouble ticket and have serverbeach upgrade my kernel?

I have not bought my server yet, but this is a MAJOR consideration.
I was with a SB competitor and failed to upgrade my kernel and sent my server into kernel panic 2 times! You would probabaly guessed that I am petrified of this operation now, and am adoring server beach for their trouble ticket, and upgrading services -- something that I could not buy from the SB competitor

If a trouble ticket would not covor this, would I have to pay for Admin services @ $75 per 1/2 hour? I am hoping to avoid that, but if it has to be done, it has to be done.

Thanks for any responses to this question. I could call sales, but it is very late at night, and I am hoping that someone could explain to me how this works.
Thanks!

[altp]

according to serverbeaches support page, their trouble tickets cover security patches, which is the only reason you would want to upgrade a kernel on a server anyway.

when you buy a server, you get 3 such tickets .. so, i'm guessing, you could use those towards that.

Its very simple to upgrade you're server though, assuming you are running redhat. the up2date program goes out, downloads everything and installs it for you. You need to configure it to install kernels, it skips those by default.

One thing that did strike me as 'odd' though, was that Serverbeach didn't patch the server before putting it online. it takes a minute to run "rpm -Uvh /mnt/cdrom/*.rpm" .. It seems like the extra couple minutes of their time to make sure that new boxes are patched BEFORE the new admin is given the root password would be a good idea.

While it is unlikely that an exploit would be taken advantage of, even before a domain resolves to it, it is possible.

Having added the new Redhat up2date certificates would have been nice too. For someone that has never used the program before, the server would prolly just go on being unpatched when they get the ssl error.

Altp.

[knightfoo]

Originally posted by altp
One thing that did strike me as 'odd' though, was that Serverbeach didn't patch the server before putting it online. it takes a minute to run "rpm -Uvh /mnt/cdrom/*.rpm" .. It seems like the extra couple minutes of their time to make sure that new boxes are patched BEFORE the new admin is given the root password would be a good idea.

ServerBeach servers do go online fully up-to-date with the latest RedHat errata. We update our local RedHat mirror nightly (including updates) and merge new packages into our installation system as soon as we are sure that they work properly. If there is a major exploit, the installation system is updated immediately. It is very rare that a server will go online without all of the updates .. at most it might be a couple days behind (unless of course there is a major exploit).

Having added the new Redhat up2date certificates would have been nice too. For someone that has never used the program before, the server would prolly just go on being unpatched when they get the ssl error.

As far as I know, the only servers affected by this were servers that went online before the certificates expired.

-knightfoo

[knightfoo]

Originally posted by AdamJBaldwin
I have a question:
Is it possible for my to buy a trouble ticket and have serverbeach upgrade my kernel?

I have not bought my server yet, but this is a MAJOR consideration.
I was with a SB competitor and failed to upgrade my kernel and sent my server into kernel panic 2 times! You would probabaly guessed that I am petrified of this operation now, and am adoring server beach for their trouble ticket, and upgrading services -- something that I could not buy from the SB competitor

Yes, you can use the trouble ticket to perform the kernel upgrade. It is a fairly simple process and you might be able to do it yourself .. installing the kernel RPM and making sure it boots is only a 2 step process. However, if you do not feel comfortable doing it then you can use a ticket to have ServerBeach do it.

-knightfoo

[altp]

ServerBeach servers do go online fully up-to-date with the latest RedHat errata.


Mine wasn't. It was behind by several months. It had about 30 or 40 updates and a kernel update.


As far as I know, the only servers affected by this were servers that went online before the certificates expired.


I had to install the certificates myself, and I just got it last wednesday or thrusday.

Altp.