I would like to see the SolarWinds hot fixes improved, to make them fool proof and easier to implement. Here's my idea...
Currently, the SW hot fixes that I've implemented required for me to do a lot of work. For example...,
- Extract contents of the hot fix to a temporary location (i.e. C:\Temp)
- Stop some (or all) SW services
- Copy the old files (i.e. DLL, ASPX files, etc.) to a location the desktop
- Delete the same files from the applicable SW directory
- Copy the new files to the new location (as per the Read Me file).
- Restart the SW services (or reboot the SW server)
- If multiple directories, repeat steps 2 - 6 for each directory (or sub-directory)
- If hot fix needs to be applied on the additional polling engines too, repeat steps 1 - 7 for each polling engine.
I find the above process a bit cumbersome and prone to human error. This is especially true for SW customers, like me, that support over a dozen SW servers. So, I would very much prefer a SW hot fix installation file that performed all the steps listed above -- even launching the Config Wizard (if needed). This would be a very welcomed improvement, and would also take out the guess work of whether or not any of the steps were skipped.
I forgot to add.... The self-contained hot fix SW executable should also include an uninstall option. This uninstall would simply revert the process back to the pre hot fix status. Of course, this would require for the installation hot fix to copy the applicable files to a safe location. That way, the hot fix uninstall executable would "know where to find the applicable files".
If the SW developers accomplished these things, it would greatly reduce the number of calls and tickets w/SW tech support. And, obviously, it would also reduce the time for hot fix to a small fraction of what currently needed. So, win/win for everyone!!!
What do you think? Are self-contained hot fix SW executable files a worthy idea? If so, I would very much appreciate your vote. Thanks!!! 
