It seems I easily miss learning about helpful hot fixes and Buddy Drops when they're released. I'm pretty busy, and keeping up with them could be made a LOT easier:
1. Tie in all the Solarwinds modules (NPM, NCA, NTA, UDT, etc.) to some external service (the Licensing Customer Support page integration feature?) so Solarwinds Support knows all the modules we have, their versions, their installed Hot Fixes, Buddy Drops, etc. This must include all Solarwinds servers--APE's, separate databases, etc. Have it include any recommended registry tweaks that have not already been performed. Make it a task list of steps we have to do, based on what modules we own, which APE's, databases, etc.
2. Have Solarwinds automatically analyze what products we have installed & licensed for support.
3. Solarwinds sends our NPM a notification that displays at the top of our NPM page (or via an e-mail?) which tells us which Hot Fixes & tweaks we DON'T have, but should.
4. The notification includes a hot link for the details of the patches, why they were developed, which of our products need them, plus the instructions for downloading and installing the Hot Fixes. It also includes what we need to know for installing or changing things on the databases and APE's to improve performance.
5. The notification ALSO includes any useful / recommended registry tweaks that help Solarwinds products / servers hosting Solarwinds products run better.
6. The instructions carefully describe the order in which patches or registry adjustments or Buddy Drops are to be deployed, and specifies whether patches must be run on the main NPM instance and also on APE's, or if the patch is carried to the APE's via the Admin > Details > Polling Engines > Download Installer Now links that has to be accessed on every APE.
7. Once the recommended Hot Fixes, etc. are completed, it displays some icon (a green "Good To Go" icon?) indicating all recommended patches & tweaks have been applied.
Oh, well, while I'm asking for the moon, consolidate this all into one "Master" updater, just like the newly upgraded Installer process that does all modules in the same task. Have it display how much down time is expected for each server / poller / database / etc.
Please vote for this, and even add a comment about whether you'd like that single magic button to get all the updates installed at once, automatically, in the right order.
