Managing updates in an enterprise

When you first install any Linux distro, it will be configured to access its own package repositories. This allows the user to install any software package or install updates directly from these normal distro repositories. This is great for home or small business use, but not so great for the enterprise.

In an enterprise setting, there are two additional considerations:

You want to restrict what packages the end users are allowed to install.
You always want to test updates on a separate test network before allowing them to be installed on a production network.

For these reasons, enterprises will often set up their own repository servers that only have approved packages and approved updates. All other machines on the network will be configured to pull their packages and updates from them, rather than from the normal distro repository. (We won't go into how to set up on-premises repository servers here, because that's a topic better suited for a Linux administration book.)

Ubuntu has always been one of the more innovative Linux distros, but it's also had more than its fair share of quality-control problems. In its early days, there was at least one Ubuntu update that completely broke the operating system, requiring the user to re-install the operating system. So, yeah, in any mission-critical environment, test those updates before putting them into production.

I think that that's about it for our introductory chapter. Let's wrap things up in a summary, shall we?

Table of Contents for Managing updates in an enterprise

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Table of Contents for
Managing updates in an enterprise