Windows patches and TopView

Windows patches and TopView

TopView robustly handles Windows patches.
Windows patches do not break TopView installations and are safe to apply regularly.

Windows patches affect TopView alarm monitoring operations:
  1. Patches require restarts which mean any running Engines will be shut down
  2. Alarm notifications may potentially be redelivered.
    1. If this is a concern, consider the option to suppress alarms at startup:
      TopView Configurator > "General" settings in the left sidebar > "Suppress alarms at startup"
To ensure TopView runs successfully after a Windows patch, we recommend the following during the patching process:

  1. Shut down TopView Engine services before Windows patches
  2. Apply the Windows patch
  3. After the server has started back up, check to ensure all TopView Engine services are running in both:
    1. The Windows services dialog, and
    2. In the TopView Admin Tools application. It is possible for the TopView process to be running as a service but unable to start due to issues connecting to the data server. If the TopView process is running but does not appear able to connect, please:
      1. Restart the service. This is usually enough to correct any post-patch issues.
      2. Check the application logs in the TopView Admin Tools application, looking for logged errors, to expose any issues that need correcting.

Sometimes, Windows will start the TopView Engine services and leave them in a bad state after a patch. This is why we recommend double-checking and restarting the service if there are issues.

Info
If reboots after Windows patches regularly start TopView in a bad state, we recommend setting the TopView service to use “Delayed Startup”.