Modify Orion Platform to display all recommended hot fixes and Buddy Drops as alerts in the top of NPM's header when they're not already installed. Then make the upgrades happen with one click.

Release Updates != hot fixes/BD's
So seems like not implemented yet.

Magic button now currently on order.

Sadly in the interval between when I wrote that post and today, I've left health care as an industry.

Regardless, about my argument for there being a fine balance between adding/updating features to keep it relevant and useful and keeping the platform stable... The difference should be picked up by the vendor. Feel free to do 6-monthly feature releases *wink wink* but if you are going to, at least have a comprehensive and consistent testing programme.

But the vendor's ideals can only go so far, as we see, even when done well. It's up to us as the IT guys to pitch how the uptake goes.

"If it keeps gettin' better and better, O Lord--I don't know what I'm gonna do!"

In Orion Platform 2018.4 Orion Platform 2018.4 Release Notes - SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. Help and Support which is delivered alongside NPM 12. 4 NPM 12.4 Release Notes - SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. Help and Support 

We now have centralized upgrades, and alongside a new "My Orion Deployment"

This will be your home base to manage gather centralized diagnostics, centralized upgrades, and look at the health of your deployment.

I'm sure it's rare that everything would break so dramatically or completely that functionality is lost, and even if it does - it's monitoring, right? All you've lost is the ability to tell from a distance if everything is working, you can still go up to the monitored service and poke it with a stick and say, yes, it's still fine so let's not worry right now. It's probably symptomatic of a rather bureaucratic and hide-bound organisation that a new problem and troubleshooting it might present such an issue, and I really do hate being on the side that says "Let's just hang on a minute here" because I'm convinced that the cost of inertia is greater than the price of change. Maybe with a clever install button that lets you interact a bit with it, select what you want it to do, then let it go off and do magic... Could be love at first sight.

You've got some great observations, Simeon.

Like you, I live in the Health Care industry.  But so far none of my customers rely on our Solarwinds products so aggressively that auto updates and troubleshooting new problems they cause would be a hardship.

All I'm interested in is having a well-working NMS, and since upgrading to NPM 12.2 and adding IPAM and UDT and one more APE, that's not been my experience.  Each time I open a ticket with Support I find I'm redoing basic things, downloading & reapplying old or new hotfixes, changing registry settings, etc.

I just want it to work well. If having an auto-update feature present would simplify all the diagnostics and downloads and updates and reconfiguration and polling engine updates . . .  that would be a nice thing.

Hah, isn't it a terrible line? Well, I do work in healthcare so it's pretty much the opposite of Agile I guess

I don't agree with auto-installing fractional updates automatically because yeah, someone might have an issue with their very specific set up but there's no way of testing across the different permutations of setups whether it will have an impact. I mean, from my work side of things, auto-install is an instant no-no for us, as we have a whole bunch of documentation to go through just to upgrade modules, and I think most people might agree with their production/mission-critical stuff. In the home lab? Any day of the week, I'd love to have stuff updated when I get back and log in.

What I'm trying to put forward is that having the ability to very easily install hotfixes without going looking for them, great. Simplified installs? Great. Easier access and all that jazz? Love it. Stuff updating itself without you knowing until it's too late? Kind of a turn off. The main problem with this particular poll is it has some great points, but also some points that people will shy away from - a button that does everything and also modifies your servers to accommodate itself? Besides the obvious line about job security, I imagine most people might want a little more control over the process And that's all I'm saying, I'm just advocating a happy medium.

Oh as for XP, that should have gone out the window a decade back - think we can partially blame the laptop manufacturers for giving Vista a bad rep and causing XP to stay too long?

That line heard it since I started IT “Unless it’s broke, don’t fix it”

Not directing this at you just generally  

new features anyone?

keeping hardware in the latest firmware stop security holes.

Patching, how on earth are people still using XP, that wasn’t a question i know why but stems from that line above. By the way we still have systems on xp.

just cause it’s not broke for you it may not working for someone else.

also that line suggets you a very reactive team, again we are but this tool allows you to be proactive and alert on issues that are going to happen.

im all in with the above the upgrade procedure is still nerve racking needs to be simpler.

i know there working on it but when I download a hot fix it should come with the installer to apply it to the additional polling engines agghh

thanks for reading my rant

Agree that there should be more visibility/prompting for fixes. Not agreeing with auto-install as, unless it's broke, don't fix it!