| Some managed hosting providers boast of their | | | | consider that PHP 4 and MySQL 4 have significant |
| ability to provide automatic software patching | | | | issues that need to be planned before updating |
| inclusive of the server management services they | | | | these. When PHP was automatically upgraded to v5, |
| provide. Clients do like this concept: all they have to | | | | the register_globals behaviour was altered breaking |
| do is rely on their service provider to do all the dirty | | | | significant parts of the code. Additionally the my.cnf |
| work. | | | | file was overwritten with a default configuration that |
| But behind the scenes, it becomes important to | | | | bound the MySQL service to a different port |
| consider just how the automated patches are applied. | | | | breaking connection from the PHP pages. |
| Some managed hosting companies like to use the | | | | Hosting providers operators need to have a defined |
| yum update feature. Granted this is an efficient | | | | change management process. Whilst these problems |
| method of patching. However, let's consider a case | | | | were easily corrected once identified, it was a |
| study: | | | | nuisance for the client to suffer the heartburn |
| An intense database/feed driven website that used | | | | knowing their web business was offline all night. Be |
| basic PHP and MySQL as the underlying engine. The | | | | sure to ask your managed hosting provider how they |
| lacky at the managed hosting company on patching | | | | apply patches and what preventative measures they |
| night thought "easy I'll use yum update". Little did he | | | | take before doing so. |