SQL Server 2005 SP2 killed my web sites

A few days ago I was visiting my web server (running Windows 2003). Windows Update prompted me to install the SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 update so I went ahead and clicked ok to do that.

Yesterday I was surfing thru my web sites and realized that some of my web sites running on that server did not work as they were supposed to do, ie they only gave an error screen 🙁

It turns out the update had stopped my SQLServer service and some of my web sites had been down or partially down for several days.

I know this is my own fault, that I should have checked the server after running a major update, but I was so sure that anything coming thru Windows Update would not stop anything critical on a server. Well, lesson learned… (I hope)

3 comments

  1. One possible preventative measure for this is to use a free website monitor service like basicstate.com to send you alerts when your site has a problem.

    For the type of problem described in the orignal post you don’t even need the SMS text message alerts. Just the email alerts would have saved you some grief.

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