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Any good patch management products?

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9 replies

by johnredding

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I am about to start researching patch management products. Does anyone have feedback on products they have used that are worth buying?

9 replies

by gers39

I use PatchWorks. I did a lot of research and found this to be the best. Any time I have had a question, I get a real person to answer it right away. It automates my patches and hotfixes for me and notifies of critical updates.
I can also run conformance reports to see if I am meeting with policy. Patchworks is made by Ripple Tech.

by mrsero

Hi,

When you have a new patch to deploy how do you

a) test it, if yes do yoy have test lab? who tests it and do you have a standard set of tests?
b) When do you apply it (in the morning after the backups) or at night before the backups?
c) Do you apply it to low risk servers first and wait a few days before applying to critcal servers?
d) Do you have agreed maintenance times with the users?

My company does not have budget for a patching tool so i need to do it manually, but i stillneed a policy to define when and how we apply them (at least to servers).

Any ideas welcome,

thanks,

MrSero

by admin

If there is no benefit and no risk by not patching we never patch hehehe

but then there are some that gotta go on immediately due to the risk of not patching.....
back up before :) if possible, make an image first (you did plan for redundancy, right?) and then patch.

IMO this would have to be a policy with so many exceptions (including reacting to things not even thought up or released yet) that it would be kinda a waste of time in real life, although you may need it to soothe the powers that be or whatever :>

If ya don't need the patch and it ain't broke, well........

(How do YOU tell how much 2 cents worth is?)

by jimhm

Thats a pretty big question - without asking what are your general requirements. Are you only going to be using it for MS patches? Is it for all application programs on all environments? Are you going to use it to push new software? Do you want other features? Backout? Tracking? Success/failure notification? Number of workstations? Number of environments?

To simple of a statement - provide some requirements - your price could be from Freeware to Millions depending on the features and functionality..

Your question is like saying what is can I use to get to the supermarket? Walk - Crawl - Bus - Bike - car - etc

by trugerpa

I am using a product call Patchworks which has helped me manage patches on 50+ machines. What is really nice are the conformance reports which show you instantly the machines that do not conform to your required updates. Mass deployments are intuitive and do not require user intervention. There are a few things missing with the present version but Rippletech Patchworks is releasing a new version in July which will alow the deployments of patches through a firewall for my DMZ machines. Overall I am very happy with this product and would recomend this to anyone.

by admin

but not everyone does. :)

I don't depend on it (gotta use the noggin for security) but it is a good tool and cheaper than many for what it does.

I would at least check it out if I were you.

:)

by trugerpa

I am using a product call Patchworks which has helped me manage patches on 50+ machines. What is really nice are the conformance reports which show you instantly the machines that do not conform to your required updates. Mass deployments are intuitive and do not require user intervention. There are a few things missing with the present version but Rippletech Patchworks is releasing a new version in July which will alow the deployments of patches through a firewall for my DMZ machines. Overall Iam very happy with this product and would recomend this to anyone.

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