PATCHING PATCHING PATCHING

[inkastinka]

Hi Everyone!

I have a problem and need a few hints as to how in the heck I can fix it. I am Mr.Patch manager at our company and have the responciblty of patching all in house servers. currently about 250 and helping out the client guys when they need it. My question is how do you keep track of everything? I got guys coming up with seriously advanced excel documents, tools, and the like... I think patching should be kept easy and straight forward. perhaps but having a diary for every machine? its a thankless job and everyone always has a say in the matter... even those that don't really understand the importance of security patches.. so again... what or how do you keep track of all the patches, restarts and the like???


thanks a million!

a very tired man

 

[ChrisRAnthony]

To enable us to track all MS patches and to install them we use LanDesk. I realise that this is probably an expensive option for you to investigate, but it might give you a starting poing. Microsoft also do a patch management system which you might like to look at.

 

[inkastinka]

we have HFNETCHK thats works wonders.
the biggest problem is keeping track of everything so everyone is happy. like:
what were the results after the restart?
who applied the patch?
what time?
tested applications?

more some a day book / log book for every server...

 

[needcoffee]

Does your company has a Change Management policy and procedsure in place already? Drafting one would be a good place to start. You probably have a mix of server and OS types so you need to develope a baseline for tracking. Have you checked out Don Krause's Network DNA project at

http://www.networkdna.org.

It is an evironment documentation methodology and materials distributed under on open source license that may give you some idea of how you want to proceed. The templates could easily be used to aid designing a basic DB and front end to perform the tracking above. For 250 servers you could even use Access.

Good Luck!
needcoffee

 

[myboat]

I'm interested to know how many hours after patch Tuesday do you patch?

Thanks