Let me explain my question a bit.

We are a small company that have now made the first move to a bigger network. For now the network contains of 5 servers 2008 R2 (dc,sql,web,etc..).

Everything we need is now in place but for now we cannot afford to finish the network by implementing redundant systems. (secondary dc, dns, sql cluster, etc...) For some people this is hard to understand but this is the current situation. (and we are aware and will fix this when we can)

Because we want to keep our system secure and up to date I've made sure that all systems are updated regularly. The problem is ofc that the nr of updates Microsoft rolls out that need a system reboot seam to occur more often. (maybe I'm wrong and it just feels like this) ;-)

In our domain servers depend on each other for services (like SQL, WEB, or whatever) so just rebooting a server at will is NOT a good idea!

For now I update all of them without rebooting at once. After all are up to date I bring them down in the order they are depended on each other. After this I reboot all of them in the inverse order.

I understand ofc that if I DID have redundancy in my system that updating and rebooting would not be such a problem because the server task could be taken over by another node but this is something we generally need to add when we can.

So my question is. If you read my above situation can you suggest me more Update strategies or general ideas that could help me do this process in a better / faster way?

Thanks for your thoughts!