Easy way to send updates to all desktop systems in a domain?

[brtspears2]

Anyway to remotely install updates to Win2k/XP systems remotely? I don't think I got the energy to sit and wait for people to finish what they are doing so I can sit for another 2 hours and install SP4 on Win2k systems with P2-300s.

 

[Rapidskies]

Network install w/ a group policy?

 

[mikecel79]

Are you running Active Directory? Look into using Group Policys to deploy software remotely. There's about a dozen different ways to do this if you are using AD.

 

[mobogasm]

OUCH!!! win2k on p2-300's. Not pretty.

 

[mikecel79]

Win2k on a PII 300 is actually not too bad. If you are doing just office work, email, and web browsing it should be fine. As long as you have more than 128MB Win2k will run pretty well on there.

 

[Saltin]

Do a search on Software Update Services at Microsoft. It's a free product that automates patching (hotfixies only) of clients. I've had it installed for about a year now with no issues and I swear it's probably saved me about two weeks worth of work.

SUS won't do Service Packs however. As others have recommended, there are ways to push the SP via Group Policy.

 

[mikecel79]

I'd have to second SUS for hotfixes. It's saved me weeks of time in updating the 500 workstations we have at work. The next version of SUS do out later this year (I think the beta starts late next month) will do Service Packs and other Microsoft applications like Office, Visio, SQL, Exchange, etc.

 

[rmrf]

Where I work, we use SMS (systems management server). We have sites all over the US, and we are the only IT, so instead of going to each site, we just use SMS to roll out the updates, and it also does service packs. It works really slick, because you can schedule it to run over night so it is done when the user comes in the next day, plus it will let you know if any machines did not get the update. SMS has other built in functionality for remote controlling pc's also.

 

[Rainsford]

SUS is free and works pretty good, but as Saltin said, it's only Hotfixes, no service packs. SMS is better, but not free (not by a long shot), and will do many more things (including service packs). I'm actually in charge of implementing something exactly like this for my company, and right now I'm experimenting with SUS and finding it rather limited. It's probably what we will go with due to budget constraints (apparently it's cheaper to pay IT staff to go around and do it by hand, not sure how they figured that one out). In any case, SUS is still a pretty good way to keep control over the systems, but it's not so great as far as abilities and flexability goes. Use it if solutions like SMS are out of budget.

 

[rmrf]

SUS is good if you have a locked down system (secure). I work with PMI (Personal Medical Information) so we have to adhere to HIPAA laws, and with the M$ straight up SP, we can't use them so we have to manually pull the SP's apart and just do the hotfixes that we can. It's really not that hard to do, you could even just download all of the hotfixes from M$ and use SUS to install.

 

[rmrf]

There is one thing you should keep in mind if you decide to go with SUS option. It will lock down parts of IIS, so if you have any IIS servers, do not put this on them as you will probably notice parts of your web services will stop working.

 

[mikecel79]

Originally posted by: rmrf
There is one thing you should keep in mind if you decide to go with SUS option. It will lock down parts of IIS, so if you have any IIS servers, do not put this on them as you will probably notice parts of your web services will stop working.

There are ways around this. You can undo the IIS lockdown wizard and then run it again with your own settings. This also only applies to the SUS server. Not to the client machines that may have IIS on them.

 

[igiveup]

I would like to throw in another recommendation on SUS. Its pretty slick. As far as service packs, you can always use group policy to push those out to machines (extract the service pack and then use the MSI file to assign the service pack to the computers you want). If you want other applications installed, use the WinInstall LE that comes on the 2000 CD to create MSI files that you can then assign and publish with Active Directory.

Its not SMS by a longshot, but it does work. Here is the Download page for Winstall LE 2003 (the 2003 version supports MSI 2.0). I would recommend checking this tool out as it can save you a buttload of time. Luck all....