Patch Management Solution

Morning everyone.  I have a question about the Software Update Installation Schedule.  What happens if a system is not on when the start time of the schedule is reached?  Will the system run the job when it starts, or does it have to be on at the designated time? 

Unless you use the "Run (other then agent default)" setting, it will only run at the time scheduled by the software update plug-in policy applied to the system. If it misses the scheduled time, it will reschedule for the next installation time...

I never use the "Run (other then agent default)" setting as we have cloned the "Default Software Update Plugin policy" and setup custom policies for workstations/laptops/servers etc.. It works real nice as long as you make sure to setup the targets correctly so that a system only has one plugin policy applied to it.

Hope it helps,

Dustin

So that means if you machine is never on at that scheduled time then it will never get patched EVER. That cant be right. I was under the impression if it missed the schedule then when the machine turned on it would see its in the past and install. But then that was a guess. :-)

If thats the case that it never installs then thats no good as far as I can see!

The idea is that you can control when patches are installed and systems are restarted. Sometimes it is very important to know exactly when a system will be patched/restarted...

However, I would recommend what we do for most of our workstations. We have the plug-in policy set to install every hour. That way if any updates are scheduled they will install within the next hour. You can also use a window instead of a scheduled time so you have several options for scheduling.

Attached is an example of our Desktop Software Update Plug-in Policy... When we need to reboot the systems, we simply hop in there and change the date for the restart section, as there is no repeat it will only restart the systems within that window on that date.

Here is how it works:

You create the software update taks on the server and add a schedule to run this task. If you set an expiry date for this available task, it won't run after that. For eg:, you set the task to run from May 21st 1 AM to May 25 12 PM.

Ok, now get back to the client machine. If the machine is offline  today and if it comes online tomorrow and start talking to the server, depending on the Configuration Request Interval , it will pick up the task and download it to the local machine. Mine is set to 2 hours. But if my pc was offline and I connect it to the network and open Symantec management agent settings and then hit the Update button, it will pull the software update task soon. Hope this helps. Let me know if you need more details, I am glad to help.