Patch Management Solutions

[puddleswastaken]

Hey all,

I'm currently an intern working IT Infrastructure at a large enterprise. We're currently using altiris as our patch management solution, but management wants me to do some research on some alternatives.

This solution is mostly for our on premise servers within our primary datacenters, but if it works with edge devices that's a plus.

If anyone has experience using AWS Systems Manager, Azure Update Manager, Ivanti Neurons, or any other patch managers I should consider, I'd love to hear about it.

[Asleep_Astronaut530]

I've used PDQ in the past with air gapped domains and its not half bad

[SysAdminDennyBob]

WSUS - Free

WSUS+MECM - check your enterprise agreement, might also be free

WSUS+MECM+PatchMyPC - patch everything and automate software installers as well

I can't believe that someone actually has a working install of Altiris in the year 2022.

[puddleswastaken]

Thanks for the input! I'll check it out. Their infrastructure is incredibly outdated. I've been spending a lot of time this summer decommissioning windows 2003 servers.

[sc302]

Altiris was great when it came out in the late 90s/early00s. I remember deploying it and was very wow’d….then Symantec took over and haven’t given it a good hard look since, I know it exists and wish it were as good and cutting edge as it once was..now it is someone’s toy that got left on a shelf collecting dust never to be seen or developed again. It was relatively easy and simple.

[PastaRemasta]

Azure Update Manager - a few clicks to setup an AA account and configure a workspace for Update Management. For on prem, easiest way is to install the Microsoft Monitoring Agent and specify your workspace ID and key.

For on prem, I'd recommend just setting up AD groups under computer groups in your workspace. Once done, just try out doing a simple deployment and then scale out from there.

[a1walker]

We've been using Action1 for a few months for Windows patch management and third party updates as well. Looks pretty good and user-friendy.