Research

UpdateEXPERT provides articles on-line that answer questions about interdependencies, change history, deployment notes, reasons for the updates, categories and more. Having these articles at your fingertips enhances your ability to make informed decisions about security and stability problems. More information means fewer mistakes and improved QoS, since you do not need to deploy all updates as they become available.

Figure 3: UpdateEXPERT Research Page

Taking Inventory

UpdateEXPERT inventories managed machines on the network. This process is fast, and with the benefit of the discovery step, you already know what security and stability updates to deploy. The results are easy to read and provide an inventory of the updates installed on all of these systems. Plus, most of these installations are validated, which means that you can rest assured that once deployed, these updates will remain in tact.

The inventory helps users to determine what actions are necessary for deploying updates. So, the inventory provides the needed information for making decisions about deployment and without visiting each system in person.

The time savings are incredible when one assumes that a single system’s inventory collected manually takes as long as ten minutes. Thus, 100 systems equal 1000 minutes (or 16h:40m). If this can be accomplished in seconds per system, the timesavings for taking inventory of multiple systems with UpdateEXPERT is measured in hours.

Figure 4: UpdateEXPERT Inventory Results Page

Defining Policies

Users can designate the updates that are required for any systems. This pool of required updates defines the set of policies for the entire domain. Only applicable updates from the required updates pool are deployed to each system. With one click, users can update any combination of systems so that they comply with these policies.

Before, during and after deployment, all managed systems can be measured against these policies with the conformance report. The conformance report will compare the list of required updates with the current inventory. The results (seen below) offer easy to find exceptions.

Figure 5: UpdateEXPERT Conformance Report and Manage Required Updates Dialog

Deploying OS Updates

UpdateEXPERT employs technology that enables administrators to deploy updates from a single workstation or server and at any scheduled date/time to any combination of systems. This process is simple and provides valuable feedback. Users select the updates for deployment or opt to deploy required updates. They select the machines where the updates are destined and the date/time when the deployment will take place.

Figure 6: UpdateEXPERT Deployment of Updates

Deployment reduces time spent to update machines better than any other feature. If one considers the time necessary to update systems in person using sneaker-net, it is compelling how the timesavings add up. Refer to the example of return on investment on p. 12. Timesavings, tighter security, enhanced system stability… Plus, instant feedback for any job in progress.

Feedback

It isn’t enough to provide just a tool with deployment and inventory capabilities. UpdateEXPERT supports users by providing information about the status of all the jobs scheduled. No more guessing. Add to this feature the extensive reporting options and installation validation. Thus, users have everything they need to manage service packs and hotfixes.