Hi sluetze –

Thanks for raising these questions, and particularly the questions about the Isilon patches that were released in response to ETA 199379. One of the primary goals of Isilon Information Development is to make sure that our customers are well-informed about EMC Isilon products and services, and we appreciate hearing when we’re not meeting that goal.

I’ll answer your questions in the order that you presented them:

• Question: How can a customer see which patches are required / Recommended?
  Answer: The best way to determine which patches you might want to install is to refer to the Current Isilon OneFS Patches document. This document provides a brief summary of each patch that is available for all supported OneFS families. If, after reading the summary, you are not sure whether to install the patch, then I’d encourage you to read the README file that accompanies the patch download. The README file contains full details about the patch. For rollup patches—and for rollup patches only—full details are also available in the Knowledgebase (KB) in the more user-friendly KB article format.
• Question: Do I have to download all Patches and read the ReadMe?
  Answer: If, after reading the summary in the Current Isilon OneFS Patches document, you are not sure whether to install the patch, then yes. If you believe this expectation is unreasonable, let us know.
• Question: What is the Current Isilon OneFS Patches for - if the Current Isilon Patches do not appear in it?
  Answer: If the Current Isilon OneFS Patches document doesn’t provide information about OneFS patches that are currently available, there is definitely a problem. We update this document at least weekly, and more frequently when required. I see from the thread on ETA 199379 that this document didn’t get updated as promptly as it should have been. I will work with the team so we can coordinate this better in the future. On the other hand, note that the current version of the Current Isilon OneFS Patches document, which was last revised on March 27, does reference all 7 patches that were listed in the “Patches of the Week” email.
• Question: What happened to the SMB rollup Patches for OneFS 7.0.2.x prior 7.0.2.12? (There were at least two patches, which disappeared...)
  Answer: Isilon restricts the availability of SMB rollup patches for versions of OneFS earlier than the Target Code version for each family. Therefore, now that OneFS 7.0.2.12 has been designated as Target Code for the 7.0.2 family, the previous versions of the SMB rollup patches have been removed from EMC Online Support. (The only SMB rollup patch now available is the version that’s applicable to OneFS 7.0.2.12.) You can obtain earlier, and now restricted, versions of an SMB rollup patch by contacting Support.

You also mentioned that you aren’t able to access the same documents and/or product downloads that your Sales team can access. If you believe access permissions are an issue, reach out to EMC Customer Services so they can get this straightened out.

I hope this helps.

tom

Hi Tom,

thanks for your answers. I already thought that I should be able to get the information out of the Current Isilon OneFS Patches.

Fun Fact: yesterday at the time I wrote this discussion, the patches from last week were not included - since I downloaded it yesterday to save the state of the day, I checked the "updated" Date and it says March 23, 2015 - so yesterday the Version of March 27 was not available for me as customer (30.03.2015 / 15:35 CEST). Maybe you could double check that.

The story with my sales team is as follows:

I started implementing an SMB rollup patch (Patch-126523) for our over 40 clusters in November (and let my sales team check if this patch is useful for us) - due to our very strict test and quality management (and holidays ) we started implementing in February in our production environment.

A short time after we raised a SR for problems with one of our clusters - support suggested to implement a highly recommended SMB Rollup Patch (Patch-131508).

Today you won't find any of these patches available for the customer.

And if you have both patches and compare the ReadMe you can see, 126523 was released in April. 131508 was released in July.

BUT: in November when I checked Current Isilon OneFS Patches it stated the 126523 - and that is where something is messed up, as customer I would expect to find the latest RollupPatch for my current Version (or the Target Code Version of that time)

You could guess I was not amused about implementing an "old Patch", when a newer patch was available for 4 months at the time I started.

You wrote, that Isilon restricts the availability of SMB Rollup Patches for Versions of OneFS earlier than the Target Code version for each family - in reverse this means for me as customer, when I have not implemented the current Target Code I have to ask support for the availability of available Rollup Patches?

Thanks a lot in advance.

-- Steffen

I totally understand your situation—and I wouldn’t have been amused either. Would it help if we added to the README a simple statement indicating that SMB rollup patches are updated frequently, and it’s therefore a good idea to verify that you have the latest/best version available before installing it? We should probably do that. Case in point, I see that there have been 8 revisions of the SMB rollup patch of the OneFS 7.0.2 SMB Rollup Patch since Patch-126523 was issued (between April 2014 and March 2015), and 17 versions of the OneFS 7.0.2 SMB rollup patch overall (since its inception in November 2013). Best practice is to check EMC Online Support for newer versions, and to contact Support if you don’t see a version of the SMB rollup patch that applies to your version of OneFS. Of course this would reset your clock for testing and validation of the patch in your environment….

Regarding availability of rollup patches: You are correct. If you’re using a version of OneFS other than the version currently designated as Target Code, and if upgrading to Target Code is not feasible at this time, then the right thing to do is to contact Support to obtain the rollup patch that applies to your version of OneFS. Support will make sure that you get the latest/best rollup patch for your version of OneFS, and can advise you of the issues that you might encounter by not applying the newest version of the patch.

Fun fact double-check: All documents, downloads, and other resources posted to EMC Online Support are identified by a unique ID, so only one version of the document can exist at any one time. I’m not sure how you were able to access an older version of the document unless you somehow accessed a local copy of the document (a version that you had accessed earlier). Another possibility is that another version of the document is available somewhere and really shouldn’t be. If you can share a link to the older doc, that would be great.

Glad to be of some help!

Couple of ways to improve for patches (not only roll-ups):

- in the software updates notification e-mails, add a short description or keywords and the exact OneFS release  for each patch (much like in the support search/result page)

- add links to patch readmes under unique names "readme. " so they can be saved quickly without further

ado (unpacking PLUS renaming)

- have the current patches doc in timely sync with actual patch publications

- include outdated patches (but for current OneFS releases) in the current patch doc, even without download links.

- patches for older OneFS releases that are neither fixed in current target codes (nor have equivalent counterparts there) are extremely annoying. See for example patches for 7.1.1.1 that show "Fixed in: -", i.e. fixes are missing for target code 7.1.1.2. Avoid such situations please, or at least add explanations for those cases.

Thank you

-- Peter

Thanks for the suggestions, Peter. I'll take them to the team for consideration and let you know what I hear.

Regards,

tom

I clicked on the link (https://support.emc.com/docu50781) provided in the notification email and was directed to the March 23 Document, yesterday I used the same link and was directed to the March 27 document  - only technical explanation I see for this behavior is something with caches. I will retest next week

SMB Rollup Patches: yes such a notification would be useful for any Rollup Patch which is updated quite often.

The most disturbing thing about this "patch situation" is, that sales promotes the Isilon as easy to manage and easy to upgrade / patch et cetera. That you can do anything on your own - this is why I don't like to involve support for every patch I want to install. The process provided is another process than sales sold

@Peter_Sero: good suggestions!

I'll pass along this feedback too, Steffen, and see what kind of improvements we can make.

Thank you Tom, highly appreciated!

I have launched two requests as suggested.

Cheers

-- Peter

Thanks a lot.

I have also launched the two requests.

Best Regards

Steffen