The down side to SUS is it only does critical updates, and doesn't do service packs.
I personally use Patchlink (www.patchlink.com) - which has always rated one of the best (most times the best). It costs a little to initially get it setup, but maintenance is as low as $15 a windows machine - per year. Add that to a ~$1200 console (paid once) and your golden. Patchlink is also what I consider an enterprise solution, as it handles Windows platforms and software, Unix (a number of commercial flavors - including RedHat Linux), it also does Netware. With this price, you also get email notification of all patches that come out on these platforms (down to media player patches). It also comes with additional abilities that allow you to deploy other software (Adobe Acrobat Reader, WinZip, ....) You can also add your own packages. I just created one that scheduled defrags on my windows 2000 servers (SUS certainly can't do that). When you are talking about an enterprise solution, you can't beat this. If you are talking about a small shop that can't afford a little money ($1500 gets the console and 17 Windows clients for the first year, $250 covers you for the next year), then SUS might be a good solution. Another option if you are in a small environment is HFNETCHKLT (http://www.slavlik.com) is free for the first 50 clients you use it on. There is no time limit on this product, and it is free to use. Though it is much better then SUS, it still doesn't compare to PatchLink (IMHO). Good luck. Chris -----Original Message----- From: Su Wadlow [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 2:28 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Deploying Microsoft patches --On Friday, July 11, 2003 2:47 AM -0700 Ronish Mehta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Currently we are deploying patches manually, and this > is very time consuming, and we are not able to keep > uptodate with the latest patches being released by > Microsoft > > Anyone who has an automated process for deploying Microsoft Software Update Services. <http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/windowsupdate/sus/default.asp> Basically a company-internal version of Windows Update. Note that you can't use it to apply service packs; but it's *great* for applying other patches. And it's one product that you don't have to pay MS for. :-) We've been using it for patch deployment for over a year now, and it works great. Takes all the manual labor out of keeping our systems up to date. -- Su ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --- Evaluating SSL VPNs' Consider NEOTERIS, chosen as leader by top analysts! The Gartner Group just put Neoteris in the top of its Magic Quadrant, while InStat has confirmed Neoteris as the leader in marketshare. Find out why, and see how you can get plug-n-play secure remote access in about an hour, with no client, server changes, or ongoing maintenance. Visit us at: http://www.neoteris.com/promos/sf-6-9.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Evaluating SSL VPNs' Consider NEOTERIS, chosen as leader by top analysts! The Gartner Group just put Neoteris in the top of its Magic Quadrant, while InStat has confirmed Neoteris as the leader in marketshare. Find out why, and see how you can get plug-n-play secure remote access in about an hour, with no client, server changes, or ongoing maintenance. Visit us at: http://www.neoteris.com/promos/sf-6-9.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
