Service Packs in Wrong Field on SORT?

Hi John,

I'm not sure exactly why service packs are not available on Sort for the windows platform.  I can bring this up to our Support Planner and they can take it under advisement.

As for the P (P-Patch) entry, the items listed there are Cumulative Patches (CP) that are for post SP2 issues.  CPs are different than Service Packs.  CPs will require the latest service pack to install. CP's are currently scheduled to be released every 30 days (release timing/frequency of CPs may change) for the current shipping service pack for the windows product.

Thanks,

Wally

Thanks, Wally.  It would be helpful to customers to see consistency, across all platforms, on the SORT patch website.

Another minor item that would be helpful....consistency in the naming of files, that are posted on the SORT patch website.

A patch name that is written like this.......sfha-rhel5_x86_64-5.1SP1RP1 indicates to the customer that the patch is an RP1 patch that is applied on top of the 5.1 SP1 product.  The Windows CP patches are named differently......vcs-CP2_SFWHA_51SP2.

It would be helpful if the Windows patch names followed the same naming format......5.1SP2CP2

-John

Hi John,

I agree that there should be more consistency between products and platforms using SORT.

I've got more answers for you.  Service Packs for SFW/SFW-HA/VCS are different for Windows than other platform in that they contain the complete product and the entire product can be installed via a Service Pack on Windows.  As such, full product installs are only available via FileConnect and the Trialware site.  This will not be changing anytime soon for the Windows product that I'm aware of.

As for the naming of the patches and CPs, all of the information is there just like it is for other platforms.  It is just in a slightly different order.  In your example, vcs-CP2_SFWHA_51SP2, this is the VCS version of CP2 that applies on top of 5.1 SP2.  At this point (since two CPs have already been released), I don't see the developers changing the names of the CP releases on the Windows product line.

Thanks,

Wally

Hi John,

You bring up several excellent points. I'd distill them thus:

1.      Post Windows SPs to SORT, just like UNIX does*

2.      Start naming Windows patches using the same order and nomenclature as the rest of the product line.**

3.      SORT patch matrix should display P / CP for Windows instead of just P

4.      SORT help should add a description of what CPs are.

Do those cover it?

*technically, we wouldn’t post the actual SP files themselves (we don’t post UNIX SPs either). Instead, we post a description page and a link to FileConnect. This is for the compliance reasons outlined by Wally earlier.

** As Wally noted, this probably would not occur until the next major/minor release in order to avoid switching horses in mid-stream.

Regards,

Scott Kaiser

Senior Director, SORT

Hi Scott,

Thanks for looking into this matter.  Yes, your list pretty well covers it.  Consistency across all platforms, for patching, would make life much better for the Client SAs, and for all the SFHA consultants and SEs.

Much appreciated.  

-John

Hi John,

We've now done 1 as well, that is post Windows SPs just as we do UNIX SPs. Again, technically, we didn’t post the actual SP files themselves. Instead, we posted a description page and a link to FileConnect. This is for the compliance reasons outlined by Wally earlier.

 

We continue to pursue item 2 internally. It will likely not occur until a future release to preserve name coherency within a branch.

Hi John,

With respect to Point 2, we now plan to use the P-Patch nomenclature used by UNIX for Windows as well. We don't want to change horses in mid-stream, so we plan to make the change starting with patches on the 6.0 release, which is in the future.

Scott

Forward-looking Statements: Any forward-looking indication of plans for products is preliminary and all future release dates are tentative and are subject to change. Any future release of the product or planned modifications to product capability, functionality or feature are subject to ongoing evaluation by Symantec, and may or may not be implemented and should not be considered firm commitments by Symantec and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions.