managing Windows patches/fixes across network
Discussion
Any advice on how you deal with this would be much appreciated..
Today ive been dealing with poxy Nachi virus on our company network so my head is like soup at the moment..
Essentially our infrastructure is a head office lan, with all remote sites sitting off it a la hub set up. We run mainly NT clients but have W2K and XP aswell. Can anyone help with how to keep the clients uptodate with fixes/patches etc. Manually doing it is a no no with 300+ clients to deal with, but im not sure how to automate NT clients as Automatic Update isnt available for them IIRC?? Is there a server/client software solution that could push updates out from a central repository?? As you are all aware the number of patches that MS release gets more and more by the week so anyway to keep ahead of the game would be much appreciated..
Today ive been dealing with poxy Nachi virus on our company network so my head is like soup at the moment..
Essentially our infrastructure is a head office lan, with all remote sites sitting off it a la hub set up. We run mainly NT clients but have W2K and XP aswell. Can anyone help with how to keep the clients uptodate with fixes/patches etc. Manually doing it is a no no with 300+ clients to deal with, but im not sure how to automate NT clients as Automatic Update isnt available for them IIRC?? Is there a server/client software solution that could push updates out from a central repository?? As you are all aware the number of patches that MS release gets more and more by the week so anyway to keep ahead of the game would be much appreciated..
Definately upgrade the NT clients, as you won't be getting many (any?) more patches since they stopped being supported. Then you could look at Software Update Services (www.microsoft.com/windows2000/windowsupdate/sus/default.asp - free) or Systems Management Server (www.microsoft.com/smserver/default.asp - not free). Or there are non-MS alternatives like landesk and zenworks.
>> Edited by sjg on Friday 29th August 23:05
>> Edited by sjg on Friday 29th August 23:05
Many years ago (
) We put a network into a school in Nottingham.
We basically knew that this was gonna be trouble right the way down the line and so set up some 'Baldrig Cunning Plans' to keep them off our backs.
No.1: We had a boot disk that could be put into any client that would perform a complete harddisk reformat and download of the OS from the server - we could rebuild a complete classroom full of PCs in about 20 minutes.
Secondly, all the PCs were configured to run a specified batch file on the servr at boot so we could 'push' any updates out into the classroom PCs.
Its not too difficult to set this up to run any patches etc. I'm sure Microsoft have implmemted this themselves by now.
You should be able to run updates long before the user even gets to to log on.
This should stop any trouble. Make sur any clients on your network automatically run a batch file upon login. You can put what ever executables into this batch file wich will hopefully protect your network.
Ex
>> Edited by TheExcession on Friday 29th August 23:42
) We put a network into a school in Nottingham. We basically knew that this was gonna be trouble right the way down the line and so set up some 'Baldrig Cunning Plans' to keep them off our backs.
No.1: We had a boot disk that could be put into any client that would perform a complete harddisk reformat and download of the OS from the server - we could rebuild a complete classroom full of PCs in about 20 minutes.
Secondly, all the PCs were configured to run a specified batch file on the servr at boot so we could 'push' any updates out into the classroom PCs.
Its not too difficult to set this up to run any patches etc. I'm sure Microsoft have implmemted this themselves by now.
You should be able to run updates long before the user even gets to to log on.
This should stop any trouble. Make sur any clients on your network automatically run a batch file upon login. You can put what ever executables into this batch file wich will hopefully protect your network.
Ex
>> Edited by TheExcession on Friday 29th August 23:42
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