New deployments and patching

solarwinds-admin

Do you have any ideas for immediately deploying all update to a PC with a new OS automatically without using the GPO schedule? We would like for WSUS/EW to deploy and reboot without a delay or using the GPO Configure Automatic Update schedule.

We recently installed WDS to deploy a new OS to desktops. With this tool, MS provided an example of a MassUpdate.VBS and one of our techs demonstrated it to me. This script checks WSUS for the oldest needed update, installs one update at a time and reboots the machine each time--it's ugly. I'm thinking that there should be a better method for doing this with EW. New machines are automatically being dropped in a specific AD OU and WSUS group but the GPO does not provide for an "immediate" install schedule. I'm still learning EW and I am not sure if there are any settings to allow for this type of deployment.

Pam

solarwinds-admin

Greetings Pam.

I would offer two possible approaches, but both involve the same fundamental setup.

Step 1: Create a WSUS Target Group designed to hold machines with new OS installations. Approve ALL current and valid OS updates for this target group.

From there, you have two approaches, one requires the Extension Pack, the other is applicable to any native WSUS environment.

Option 1: Using the Extension Pack, the Update Management Wizard can be used to "Install all approved/needed updates". You may need to run this tool with two or three passes to account for exclusive updates that may also be required.

Option 2: Assign expired deadlines to the WSUS Target Group you created so that all updates approved for that group are expired. Initiate a detection on the client system, and then sit back and watch for the next few hours. Workign through the entire list of approved updates, the client system should complete installation of all updates, including exclusive updates with additional system restarts, in 2-3 hours time.