SMALL Business Windows Update Management Tool?

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[MHCLV941]

As anyone reading this knows, with Windows 10, Microsoft has rendered Windows and other Microsoft updates nearly unmanageable.  (I don’t think delaying ALL updates for a while and then having everything forced onto the computer anyway is managing!)  If one has the staff and infrastructure, there’s WSUS or SCCM or a third party app.

Does anyone know of a third-party management tool that can control Windows (and other MS) updates for small – under ten-15 PCs – businesses?  Something cloud-based, since a small business is likely not to have a server?

Thank you!

• This topic was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by MHCLV941.

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Well I’d look into ManageEngine and SolarWinds offerings…

SolarWinds offers at least a tool for service providers, with a scheme that the service provider buys the tool and runs a server somewhere, then end user organizations buy a service from the service provider and don’t need their own server.

(Disclaimer: I work for one such service provider.)

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Group policy is the only way to tell the machines what (not) to do as they all have internet access (I assume). With group policy you can point your machines at an update location that isn’t MS, but it will still need a WSUS/SCCM box and the admin overhead that goes with it.

If you are not big enough to run an IT department you have to put up with the MS way – which luckily works for most people most of the time.

cheers, Paul

p.s. any small business should have a backup mechanism / server. You can put such a beast in place using something like FreeNAS with the Bacula plug-in for less than $500.

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Paul T wrote:

Group policy is the only way to tell the machines what (not) to do as they all have internet access (I assume). With group policy you can point your machines at an update location that isn’t MS, but it will still need a WSUS/SCCM box and the admin overhead that goes with it.

Well yes, the SolarWinds tool causes the client systems to report they’re “controlled by” … even when there’s no domain to distribute the group policies. Management console can tell them to download specific updates directly from Microsoft and ignore others.

So essentially in that mode the agent goes and runs wushowhide on client machines based on what the console tells it. Has the side effect that SSUs may not wait for permission, but controls work for pretty much everything else.

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mn– wrote:

the SolarWinds tool causes the client systems to report they’re “controlled by”

Which means registry settings are made by the SW client that are the same as would be made by Group Policy. It’s the same mechanism so the result is the same. (Just for clarification.)

cheers, Paul

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You can try to Use a Windows Configuration Package, which you can deploy via MDM or manually. With the Windows Configuration Designer you can define Update Policies:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/wcd/wcd-policies#update

I’m also updating Windows Server via ansible. Prerequisite is that you can connect via WinRM to the online Clients. With ansible you have a central instance to push out the Updates – the updatesource is the default source of the client (wsus, or msupdate).

Best regards,

Robert

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