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Patch Manager- Managed Computers Node?

I am working on a Patch Manager system that looks like it was in use, but I'm a little confused- there is a Managed Computers node, and the documentation says this is where you put your managed computers... But our node only has about 6 computers, and our organization has hundreds of computers. What is supposed to go in here? I can think of several different categories of machines:

1. Update Servers

2. All Client Computers receiving updates

3. Testing Client computers

4. Implementation (of patch Manager) testing computers

Can anyone shed some light on the design intent and capabilities of this container?

Thanks!

  • Do you have discovery tasks set up?  PCs get added automatically to managed computers when they are detected on the LAN during discovery. 

    Managed computers is not a section that gets worked in much, at least not in my 3 years of working with solarwinds PM.  The only time i ever go to it is to delete PCs that I no longer have deployed.

  • I also go into Managed computers to remove PCs that have been decommissioned. The node should have all your computers if you have setup discovery tasks. I have them setup for each subnet so that all the organizations PC's show up.

  • Managed Computers node is essentially just a place where machines that have been targeted with some task (like Update Deployments, Inventory, Discovery - which is basically a port scan that looks for open ports and gathers MAC address info, etc...) are listed.

    That node is one of the way Patch Manager determines how many total licenses are used.   There is no need to try to get machines added there yourself; they will naturally show up there if/when they are targeted with a task.

    If you aren't really doing any Patch Manager tasks but are instead mostly relying on WSUS' or SCCM's native deployment methods, it is possible that there would be very few machines in there (and that's fine).

    The only real benefit to you, the user, is that as @antwesor mentioned it is a convenient place to quickly find a machine and see some details on it and/or target it with a quick task.