Has anyone completely automated their patching with SolarWinds Patch manager and WSUS?
Currently I am utilizing GPO's to kick off patching, and reboot the servers when completed, but I still go in after the fact, confirm each server is up and running and no additional patches are needed. Needless to say this is a tedious process, and I am looking for a way to automate this process more, so I don't have to sit up late nights doing this extra work.
What I am looking to do is this:
Automate the process to where the servers download and install the patches from Patch Manager, where i can set up a schedule. Something to model our existing patching schedule, Month 1- week 2, DEV servers. / Month 1- week 3 QA servers. / Month 2 week 2, UAT servers. / and finally Month 3 weeks 1-4 all production servers based on groups.
The servers get rebooted if needed
A process to run to confirm each server is up, something more than a simple ping request, something that I can safely rely on that i know the server OS is up and running.
Provide me with a report of successfully patched servers and servers that failed also also successfully booted back up to the OS log in prompt and of course servers that might have crashed.
Is Patch Manager capable of all this, or do I need to look at a new product to accomplish these goals??
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.