FEATURE REQUEST : Patch Management

[Jeremy Otten]

Now.. i can see if updates need to be installed and give the install command.

What about automating this.. or even scheduling this.. even better...

When its a vmware environment.. schedule windows update install. But first automatically create snapshots of all systems and then install the windows updates.

Afterwards .. sent a notification that the maintenance is done.. we can then check if the updates did not break anything.. and with a simple one click remove all the created snapshots and maintenance would be done.

[Paul]

This could be done using the upcoming automation module. You can write a powershell script that can determine if it's a VM, create a snapshot using the vSphere PowerCLI and then schedule the windows update installation.

PowerCLI link: https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=PCLI550&productId=352

Get available windows updates from powershell:

$Searcher = New-Object -ComObject Microsoft.Update.Searcher
$Results = $Searcher.Search("Type='Software' and IsInstalled=0")
$Results.Updates

-Paul

[Jeremy Otten]

So basically the Automation module only gives you access to do Powershell? And schedule some stuff?

Still you have to Powershell the ***** out if yourself??

[Paul]

The automation module will allow you to write scripts (Batch and PowerShell for Windows and Bash for Linux and Mac OS) and run them on demand. The schedule feature will come out in the following releases but yes, you will have to write the scripts yourself but this also comes with a greater management power. Did I mention that these scripts are centrally managed?

-Paul

[Jeremy Otten]

Centrally managed.. so can they be saved and re-used on other systems?

Is there also a helping library with most common commands and/or scripts to use with examples?

[Paul]

27 minutes ago, Jeremy Otten said:

Centrally managed.. so can they be saved and re-used on other systems?

Yes. Even better, you just create a task with 3 scripts and have the task run on a system scope. If you add other systems in the future in a Group or Tag that is part of the system scope new systems will be automatically included in the task execution.

28 minutes ago, Jeremy Otten said:

Is there also a helping library with most common commands and/or scripts to use with examples?

We'll ship a couple of built-in scripts. Scripting has a very large community on the internet, I'll be impressed if there is something you're trying to do and there isn't a sample script somewhere on the internet already.

-Paul

[Jeremy Otten]

1+

Edited August 7, 2016 by Paul
Removed link to a phone store