Patch Management User Guide for HP-UX 11.x Systems

Second, use standard HP-UX patch bundles as your starting point:
• HP provides standard HP-UX patch bundles including the Quality Pack (QPK),
Hardware Enablement (HWE), and Feature Enablement Patch Bundle (FEATURE11i)
patch bundles.
The QPK consists of defect fixes and the HWE consists of patches that are required for
new hardware products.
The FEATURE11i bundle enables new features and enhancements to the HP-UX
operating system and applications by providing the complete, minimal set of patches
required.
— New HP-UX operating system features and enhancements sometimes require the
selection of a “key patch.” For example, to enable the Locality-Optimized Resource
Alignment (LORA) feature you must select the key patch PHKL_38980, which will
then automatically select all dependent patches. See the Feature Enablement Patch
Bundle section in the HP-UX Release Notes for a list of enhancements and features
included in your FEATURE11i bundle.
— When installing applications from AR media, patches satisfying those applications'
dependencies are automatically selected from the FEATURE11i bundle on the AR
media. This process works with any application that lists patch dependencies as
corequisites. For this reason, FEATURE11i is the only standard patch bundle
included on the AR media, as well as the OE media.
The patches in these patch bundles are tested extensively with the latest OE Update
Release, so HP can recommend these patch bundles as a starting point when acquiring
patches for your needs. Simply download the bundles from the ITRC or your latest HP
media.
FEATURE11i, HWE, and QPK bundles are delivered on the HP-UX 11i v3 OEUR media.
HP-UX 11i v3 and v2 AR media also include the FEATURE11i bundle. QPK bundles
can be found on the 11i v2 Support Pack media and the HP-UX 11i v1 Support Plus
media .
For more information about standard HP-UX patch bundles, see Chapter 5: “What are
standard HP-UX patch bundles?” (page 52).
• If you have constructed a list of patch needs, compare that with the patches in your
selected bundles. If you are missing patches from your list, obtain them individually
using the ITRC Patch Database.
3. Deploying patches.
• Patch testing.
You should install the patches on one or more levels of preproduction systems and
perform testing. Testing is discussed in more detail later in this chapter.
• Planning deployment.
Determine the details regarding how the installation of the patches will occur on
production systems. The frequency and timing of patch installation maintenance
windows must be chosen to meet with particular system down time limitations and the
need to install the new patches. You might choose the timing of patching to coincide
with your current maintenance windows. However, for reactive patching, you might
be required to use unscheduled maintenance. For proactive patching, common intervals
are quarterly, every other quarter, and yearly. You should also consider the availability
of new patches and, if you are using standard HP-UX patch bundles, you will likely
want to choose a schedule that in some way coincides with the release dates of new
bundles.
Patch management life cycle 43