Couple of Patch Manager Questions...

Are you syncing adobe updates from the solarwinds catalog or from the adobe catalog?  I forget what the solarwinds catalog adobe updates are for but they are not what you want to be using.  Make sure you sync the solarwinds and any other catalog you need.

As for 2.1.3, i have 1 server with 2.1.0 and one with 2.1.3 and I dont see any difference.  There must be but I cant tell what it is.  If 2.1.0 is working for you and you dont want to update then dont imho.

OK, that got the Updates piece going, I placed a few computers into OU's for various sites. For each site's WSUS server, I right-clicked on the parent OU ("All Computers") and tried to add a computer group. It had a green dotted status bar for a minute or so, and or the past couple of hours it has had a scrolling blue progress bar. Is it not able to communicate with AD, or is something else going on here?

Please let me know.

Thanks!

Im not quite sure what youre describing.  The computer groups that you are creating are WSUS target groups and dont correlate or communicate necessarily with AD.  You add computers to the groups either by changing the PC registry (usually with an AU GPO) and either set it in a group by console targeting (default) where you move them in WSUS, or in this case Patch Manager which overlays WSUS, or via client side targeting

Sorry I should have clarified- I set groups by creating an OU and applying a GPO that puts those computers into a WSUS targeting group with the same name- it makes it very easy to see which machines are part of the testing group for new updates. When I try to add a corresponding group in Patch manager, I have a dialog that has the title "Add computer group" and I can type in a name and click Add. First a green progress bar appears and takes about a minute to computer, then a scrolling blue progress bar appears underneath the Name field and sits there spinning, with all of the controls greyed out except the X on the dialog box. I was assuming that it is trying some sort of operation that resolves to an AD group of the same name. It just seems like it will never finish, and I cannot add groups because of this. Have you ever encountered this before?

Thanks!

Oh!  Ok it makes sense now.  No I have never had that problem, it takes a second or two to create the group.  It does not communicate with AD as far as I know.  You can create the groups in the WSUS console and see if you get the same behavior, because that is where patch manager is actually creating those groups in and then we can see if its a problem making the groups in wsus or a problem with patch manager communicating with your wsus service.