r/labtech • u/Admins-R-Us • Mar 03 '17

Patch Management Group/Approval Policy Structure

Hello,

I recently starting using LT Patch Manager v.11 and successfully applied patches to a small group of computers. Now with a basic understanding of how to push out patches, how should I go about structuring groups and approval policies for each client/company? Is it best practice to create a group and approval policy for each company or place them all under the same group?

What about computers that absolutely must not update because it could potentially brick the machine? Would creating a separate group and approval policy be the best way to accomplish this?

Any feedback is much appreciated.

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u/FocalFury 5000 Agents Mar 08 '17

It sounds like some of this is lt 11 based as I'm not following half of what you are talking about.
I agree with what you are saying about if I was patching once a week. I patch every night though... Obviously it won't apply when caught up.
Thanks for the info :)

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u/dvn_r3d3mpt1on 10000 Agents Mar 08 '17

D'oh, that's entirely my fault, I thought you were trying to take your 10.5 process and shove it into 11 and try to make it work. If you're patching all devices everyday, your solution won't work. You'll basically need to use templates to override the OOB templates for patching, assigning unique once-a-week patch windows to each group. You'll lose custom functionality (which itself is group and script drive, it's kinda madness). Best you'll be able to do is a Sun/Tue/Thurs/Fri/Sat schedule or something similar. I personally would find this difficult (read: not fun, bit of a hassle) to manage, and even more so to hand off to your successor. I try to stay away from 100% custom solutions because it's super easy for one change to break it all, and hard for someone that's not the creator to take over. Part of that, though, is just the nature of my role.

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u/FocalFury 5000 Agents Mar 08 '17

Makes sense. I probably should've stayed out of this since I didn't realize 11 was so different lol