KACE Systems Management Appliance 13.2 Common Documents - Administrator Guide

Best practices for patching

Best practices for patching

Best practices for patching devices include testing patches, using labels to organize devices and patches, and notifying users when systems are being patched.

Test patches on selected devices before deploying them to all devices. This testing ensures that patches do not break anything before they are widely deployed.

When choosing test devices, look for these characteristics:

For a thorough test, devices should function normally for at least a week after being patched. If no problems are reported after a week, the patch can be deployed to the remaining devices on the network.

You can use Smart Labels to automatically group devices by type, such as laptop, desktop, and server. In addition, you can use Smart Labels to automatically group patches by importance, such as critical operating system patches and lower priority patches for other applications. You can then create patching schedules to match each type of device and patch.

See:

There are two options for patching Windows devices:

TIP: The appliance enables you to create a policy that specifies whether or not managed devices use Windows Update. See Using Windows configuration policies.

Schedule patch deployment during periods when device use is lower to minimize downtime. Keep in mind that device use varies depending on the device type:

For more information about creating patch schedules for each type of device, see:

Be sure to notify users when the devices they use are being patched. This is especially important if devices need to be restarted as part of the patching process. There are several ways to inform users of patching schedules:

• For more information on creating alerts, see Broadcasting alerts to managed devices.

For more information about scheduling patching for various devices, see:

Patching jobs can require extensive bandwidth and resources. To reduce the impact on users, you can set time limits on patching jobs. For example, you could configure patching jobs to start at 04:00 and stop at 07:00. Any patching jobs that are in progress at 07:00 are suspended. Jobs resume where they left off when the next scheduled patching job begins. See Configuring patch schedules.

Use Replication Shares to optimize network resource requirements and download time. Replication Shares are devices that keep copies of files for distribution, which can be useful for managed devices that are deployed across multiple geographic locations. For example, using a Replication Share, a device in New York could download patch files from another device at the same office, rather than downloading those files from an appliance in Los Angeles.

For more information on setting up and using Replication Shares, see Using Replication Shares.

Quest Support has a Knowledge Base of articles about the appliance, which you can access at https://support.quest.com/kace-systems-management-appliance/kb. The Knowledge Base is continually updated with solutions to real-world appliance problems that administrators encounter. To view patching articles, go to the Knowledge Base and search for Security.

Sponsored by Quest KACE, ITNinja.com (formerly AppDeploy.com) is a product-agnostic IT-focused community website. It is the Internet’s leading destination for IT professionals to share information and ask questions about system-management related topics. See http://itninja.com.

Subscribing to and downloading patches

Subscribing to and downloading patches

To enable patching, you need to subscribe to patches and schedule patch downloads to the appliance.

About patch subscription and downloads

About patch subscription and downloads

Patch subscription is the process of selecting the operating systems and applications for which you want to receive patches.

If the Organization component is enabled on your appliance, you select subscription settings for each organization separately.

After you subscribe to patches, the appliance downloads them according to the schedule you set. When patches are downloaded, you can test and deploy them. You can choose to automatically deploy patches as well, but such deployment is recommended for low-risk or time-important patches only. See:

Applications that the appliance can patch

For a list of applications that the appliance can patch, go to https://support.quest.com/kb/112030, and open the attachment.

NTP service requirement

When downloading patches using HTTPS, the NTP (Network Time Protocol) service must be running on the appliance. The NTP service is required because the secure protocol uses the current date stamps from the appliance to ensure certificate validity. If the NTP service is not running, patch download failures, suggesting invalid certificates, might result.

Websites that must be accessible to the appliance

Websites that must be accessible to the appliance

To complete patch downloads, access product information, and interact with Quest Support, the firewall, DNS server, and proxy server settings must allow the appliance to access specific domains on both port 80 and port 443.