How to handle Server Reboots?

[AndyW]

Hi,
refering to the idea that ITIL is a framework of best practices. Since we had a lot of trouble with server/service reboots I found it helpful to bring this issue under control of CHG. Although there is room for discussion if this really falls under Change Control or should be covered within INC. It seems that it works for our company very good and since this has been introduced (raising an emergency request) the amount of unplanned service disruptions has been decreased.

Cheers,

[RFCINCGuru]

There are a number of issues to consider here.

Reboots can clearly be service impacting, so how do we seek authorisation and how do we provide notification?

Firstly is the reboot required as part of a change? If the answer is yes, then the reboot is clearly part of the change and it should be handled via RFC. No brainer.

But what if the reboot is just that (i.e., purely a reboot)? Then it's a case of why the reboot is required. If it's just for "jump start" to fix an incident, why can't authorisation be sought via incident management? This can easily be incorporated as part of the Incident Managment process.

Standard change? That depends on your organisation standard change criteria. In my experience, many organisations want Standard Change to be no service impacting which would effectively rule out this route.

Service request - possible...

Notification via Service Desk - blah, blah, blah....................

We could go on and on debating the text book theory forever and a day and dissecting the issues, but the underlying issue to address is to determine what is fit for purpose for your company. What will work for the you? I've seen varying approaches to this issue, some successful and some not. In my experience, it's the dumping of issues within a particular discipline without though or consideration of the impact that causes the difficulties.