Patch Managers

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I’ve recently joined with the intent on finding better ways to update my environment and to get some good info regarding information about MS and Windows.

Has anyone ever asked about patch managers?  In particular, PDQ, Solar Winds, BMC and the like?  I did a search of the forums and I don’t see anyone discussing them besides WSUS.

Unless I’m just using it wrong it’s terrible.  I have several admins using it and they all think the same thing.

For example, you can approve patches and those will get pushed out eventually.  You can also apply a deadline to the patches and that might work, but not always.  Even if you apply patches and then you check for patches against Microsoft directly there are still some that are missed.

Anyway, has anyone ever discussed other options on this site or is the a purely MS only site?

Why doesn’t MS just make a better patching product, I’d even pay for it.

thanks.

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I’ve not seen that sort of discussion here, probably because corporates make those decisions based on what else they use to manage their systems and you have to put up with what has been chosen.

I always found the reporting of WSUS updates by PCs to be rather poor and used a remote script to check/fix individual PCs, but that’s pretty time consuming.

Here are a couple of posts with ideas.
https://pleasework.robbievance.net/howto-force-really-wsus-clients-to-check-in-on-demand/
https://omgdebugging.com/2017/10/09/command-line-equivalent-of-wuauclt-in-windows-10-windows-server-2016/

cheers, Paul

1 user thanked author for this post.

Jim N

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I manage client desktops for a small MSP and I have been using what is now Solar Winds N-Able RMM from the days of it’s original creators, about 8 years ago. It was recommended by somebody on Ask Woody and whoever you were, Thanks!

This is not a compensated endorsement! We’re small-timers here and Ask Woody and this product have kept me sane through myriad M$ patching nightmare episodes.

It is a pretty good (and reasonably priced) management tool. The monitoring component is flexible and makes scripting remediation for many of the common Windows issue a breeze.

The patching works quite well. They provide M$ patches as well as patches from other major vendors, including hardware providers. You can set up a “Site Concentrator” to which all patches for a campus can be downloaded for access by all the workstations. A scheduled time for patching can be set, as well as the aforementioned pre and post install reboots and set a number of re-try attempts. It allows for one-off patching of all or single workstations and, importantly, ignoring unwanted patches. I should mention decent reporting, too.

As it is not a sub-set of Solar Winds other products and is developed and managed by an independent team, it was not involved in the infamous Solar Winds hack of last year.

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Way more than 6 months late, and certainly a dollar short, but for what it is worth, we use Solarwinds Patch Manager which allows the scheduling of a date/time for an update group to install (and download first, if it hasn’t already been completed) updates, and it can perform pre- and post-update reboots if desired.  I often schedule separate tasks to install servicing stack updates before the regular group, and after working with it a while, I have found a relatively simple way to break up the groups so that I have to do the least manual work but still be able to schedule the updates for specific days on-demand rather than using a pre-set schedule, which allows me to wait for the MS-DEFCON level to change.

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We use a combination of WSUS and PDQ Deploy/Inventory to handle patching workstation and servers.

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Just a reminder : Windows Autopatch will be released in July 2022

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Enterprise E3 license at $450 per year required for every five managed devices:

How does the Windows Enterprise E3 license relate to user and device entitlement for Windows Autopatch? (New: June 8, 2022)

Windows Enterprise E3 is a per user entitlement which grants Windows Autopatch management of five devices.

Windows Autopatch FAQ

Windows 11 Pro version 22H2 build 22621.1485 + Microsoft 365 + Edge

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