Windows shops were caught off guard when Microsoft released
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 two weeks ago. It arrived with
little warning as IT administrators struggled to fix glitches
related to the earlier-than-usual start to
daylight-saving time (DST), on a day where
they had been expecting
a break from Patch Tuesday.
Most IT professionals have since gotten over what they
considered bad timing and publicity on Microsoft's part. But
despite a series of security and stability updates, they are going
slow with their deployments, concerned the service pack won't play
nicely with other parts of the network.
"We haven't bothered to test it yet and won't install it until
after April 15," said Brian Joyce, IT director for Chattanooga,
Tenn.-based accounting firm Joseph Decosimo and Co. He said it
would be crazy for a CPA firm to make system changes unless
absolutely necessary during tax season, and he has seen nothing in
Windows Server 2003 SP2 that looks critical. "It would be way too
risky and unnecessary, even if tested, to install it [now]."
Windows Server 2003 SP 2 is a cumulative
service pack with such new features as the Scalable Networking
Pack to help customers boost performance of Windows Server 2003
workloads like storage and backup. It also includes Wi-Fi
Protected Access 2 to help users connect to Wi-Fi hotspots, and
improved IPsec filter management.
Eric Case, a support systems analyst with the University of
Arizona's Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering,
said in an email that regardless of the security fixes that come
with the package, "service packs tend to break things." Therefore,
he too will wait to deploy it.
Eric Nooden, information systems manager for Rockford
Gastroenterology Associates, said he typically takes a wait-and-see
approach to such releases because he doesn't have much of a testing
environment. "We'll wait for a month to see whose systems get nixed
by the service pack," he said in an email exchange.
Most IT professionals understand that it's unwise to push
service packs onto production servers right after they are
released, said Edward Ziots, network engineer for a health
organisation in New England.
"It's not good change management, they haven't been tested and
can definitely cause problems or interruptions to service," he said
in an email exchange. Still, he said, some will boldly go where no
IT administrator should have gone before and apply Windows Server
2003 SP2 without testing first. They will "learn to feel the pain
in being the deployment guinea pig," he added.
Though two weeks have passed since its release, some IT pros are
still angry that Microsoft released Windows Server 2003 SP2 without
little warning so soon after DST kicked in, especially since the
company had announced that it would skip its monthly security
update this month.
"I'm still steamed that they did it on Patch Tuesday with no
heads up," said Susan Bradley, network administrator for Fresno,
Calif.-based Tamiyasu, Smith, Horn and Braun Accountancy She also
pointed to a posting in the
official blog for SBS support and product group
communications acknowledging that there had already been
reports of the service pack causing problems.
After installing Windows 2003 SP2 on SBS 2003 with ISA 2004
installed, the blog said, users may experience the following
problems:
- They can no longer successfully connect inbound using VPN
(Clients get "Error 800: Unable to establish connection").
- They cannot reliably connect to the Internet using
SecureNAT.
- Some Outlook clients will fail to connect to the Exchange
server, even with ISA 2004 SP2 and KB930414 installed.
The blog outlines steps administrators can take to fix those
problems.
In the final analysis, Bradley said, Microsoft should have
launched a better public relations campaign to prepare people for
the service pack. "To have no pre-release buzz about a service pack
is stupid marketing," she said in an email exchange. "Yes, even
service packs should have marketing."
Not everyone was bothered by the timing, however. In his
opinion, Nooden said, this service pack release was "pretty benign"
and that Microsoft shouldn't have called this a service pack "since
it looks too small in its updates to really be counted as one."
Keith Gosselin, IT officer for Biddeford Savings Bank in
Biddeford, Maine, said he hasn't done anything with the service
pack yet because some of his software vendors have requested he
hold off until they have had time to test it. But he believes some
of that caution may be overblown.
"Software vendors … have kindly and in some cases not so kindly
requested we not install the service pack until they have had time
to test, which in plain English means they'll wait 90 days or so
and then we will just install the service pack without them knowing
and most everything will work," he said.