Hi Naoki,

As you noticed there is a sequence and dependency on how software connects and re-connects. Key question often is how often and how long should those reconnects happen. In the end software doesn't know if the database server disappeared (disk crash, new name, etc) or if it is just a network glitch expressed in seconds. When should the client of the database push the alarm button that a critical part of the system (the database) is missing.

The above is somewhat different every time, definitely if it are unexpected outages. In you case however you describe a controlled outage, it happens regularly and predictably.

So my first suggestion would be to have updates on the database server first, then the application servers (and typically the database server is already back when the application servers come back from a reboot or so). Can you control the sequence and the duration of the updates?

Even cleaner would be to do a clean stop of the software on the application servers, do all updates on all servers, and then do a clean start. For 'SDL Tridion Docs Content Manager' we offer a Windows PowerShell module called ISHDeploy. Among many other cmdlets there are some cmdlets worth mentioning here: 

1. Stop-ISHDeployment which knows per Content Manager version which services should be stopped nicely and in what order
2. Start-ISHDeployment which knows per Content Manager version which services should be started nicely and in the right order
3. Restart-ISHDeployment in essence runs Stop-... and Start-... back to back, so it restarts Content Manager services without a reboot

The PowerShell module ISHDeploy is on PSGallery just like ISHRemote. Handy resources are

1. https://sdl.github.io/ISHDeploy/ on some getting started material depending on your use case
2. https://vimeo.com/378093731 is a video where I talk you through some automation concept

Best wishes,
Dave

Hi Dave,

Dave De Meyer said:

Can you control the sequence and the duration of the updates?

We are using Azure as the infrastructure and Azure Automation enables managing VM shutdown/startup schedule though it requires additional cost. 

I'm considering two possible solutions to deal with this matter:

• Controls VM shutdown/startup schedule using Azure Automation
• Launches TD14 services using ISHRemote and Task Scheduler

I heard from my coworker that it's possible to trigger a shell command by catching an event notifying a service start of SQL Server in Task Scheduler. I'll try this method first.

Thank you for your suggestion.

Kind regards,

Naoki

Thanks Naoki on sharing your thoughts... To make sure ISHRemote is the API business automation, ISHDeploy is the one on configuration/service automation

Thank you for the correction, Dave. It was my type miss. Yes, ISHDeploy is correct one.