Client Management Suite

Hello All,

     I have been trying to manage our Altiris 7.1 environment that was installed by my predeccessor.  I have been able to kepp the the Windows 2008 servers up to date with patches but then wondered if Symantec rolls out any patches or updates for the Altiris platform that I should be installing.  Is there any article or info if this is the case?  Thanks for helping a newbie.

Updates in the form of Service Packs and Maintenance Packs are published through Symantec Installation Manager (SIM), which should be on your server.

Hotfixes are released in the form of Hotfix rollup packs, usually announced on the Support Site.

Pointfixes are announced on individual support KB articles.

Generally you aren't supposed to install Hotfixes or Pointfixes unlesss you need them, if you need them you should find them by searching for your fault on the support site.

Thanks so much for the help. That was some good info.  Here they have 3 servers.  1 SMP, 1 SiteServer and 1 SQL server.  I only see SIM on the SMP server.  Would those updates push to the others if they are needed?  Thanks again for the great info.

SIM is just to build and maintain the SMP.  Yes, if a HF/RU/MP/SP contains fixes for site servers and/or clients, those fixes will be in the form of a new agent/plugin which can be deployed via the SMP.

I believe that the latest build is 7.1.2 MP1.1 v9RU.

HF = Hotfix (this can also be called a Pointfix = PF)

RU = Rollup

MP = Maintenance Pack

SP = Service Pack

Welcome to Administering SMP 7.1. In addition to what the others have said, we really pay attention to the release notes for anything Altiris related. There are some Rollups that we have not installed becuase we weren't experiencing the issues that the update fixed (we've found that some rollups introduced issues that we didn't have before). Our current version is SMP 7.1 SP2 MP1 Rollup v3.

Along with paying attention to the release notes, make sure you have a test environment that you can run the HF/RU/MP/SP on that NS first before you install on your production system.

To answer your question, whenever an update needs to be pushed out, the NS is upgraded first, and then if agents need to be updated, you turn on upgrade policies in the NS console.