Upgrade or not upgrade

[mickyq]

Hi

just a general question. is it necessary to keep ios up to date or can it be left running what it is?

Any thoughts, opinions?

[Leo Laohoo]

I try my best to upgrade as often as possible to get above potential bugs and security vulnerabilities.  Also, I don't like having Cisco appliances with an uptime of >1 year.

[Nenad Stojanovic]

Check periodically if there is interim version of specific code you are running. You don't always have to go to highest recommended version to re-mediate security threats. If major threat comes up Cisco will suggest specific versions (you can subscribe to get notifications about them). It is good to upgrade devices as often as possible but you may end up hitting bugs and spending a lot of time trying to fix issues caused by them. Specially if you don't have smartnet.

Nenad

[Leo Laohoo]

Unless the vulnerabilities get out of control, the people (or group) who discover the vulnerabilities normally provide some time before publishing the vulnerabilities.  This gives the manufacturer to verify the vulnerability and find solution.  

I subscribe to Cisco's security RSS feed and this helps me keep a good look-out of what's happening out there.  

I am sad to see none of the "old hands" (like Rick, Giuseppe, Paolo, Jon, "Smooth Rob", Joe D) haven't chimed into this topic-that-never-goes-away. 

[Oliver Kaiser]

As in every area of IT you will want to patch your systems. In case stability is very important to you using LTS releases is recommended. Dont instantly patch to bleeding edge releases one day after they are released and check the bug tracker for any showstopper bugs that you would introduce through updates.

[mickyq]

Thanks for your response guys. Much appreciated.