Windows Updates

Hi Guys,

I work for a medium sized IT Company in the Channel Isles offering Professional and Managed Services to businesses of all sizes, as well as a range of other support services such as Business Continuity, Hosting and eGaming.

My question is when we perform Windows Security Updates for clients we log into their servers and perform their patching but we need to make a note of the KB numbers that were patched and input them into a spreadsheet. When it comes to patching certain clients they tend to have a lot of patches to install and I need to write these down in the spreadsheet one by one. Is there an easier way were I can import these patches like insert them into Notepad then copy the lot of them all at once then insert them into the spreadsheet?

I have to remote to these servers so there is noway i can open a Notepad in the server and insert the KB numbers there then insert them into a Notepad on my Desktop.

Thanks for the help in advance.

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636-555-3226

Looked into using WSUS or SCCM for updates? Much better than doing it manually, along with reporting

TheFORCE

636-555-3226 wrote: »

Looked into using WSUS or SCCM for updates? Much better than doing it manually, along with reporting

what 636 said, look to automate the patching processes, you can schedule jobs, its less time consuming, more efficient etc. Look at SCCM.

BornToBeMild

Kopite_21 wrote: »

I have to remote to these servers so there is noway i can open a Notepad in the server and insert the KB numbers there then insert them into a Notepad on my Desktop.

You can enable clipboard sharing in Remote Desktop or even better enable the "map local drives" option. Then you can create a file on the server, and save it to your local drive. You could use Powershell to list installed updates:

Get-Hotfix | Sort InstalledOn -desc

The sort option fails if you don't have the U.S. date format, so a more global (but more complicated) version is:

Get-HotFix | Select description,hotfixid,installedby,@{l="InstalledOn";e={[DateTime]::Parse($_.psbase.properties"installedon"].value,$([System.Globalization.CultureInfo]::GetCultureInfo("en-US")))}} | sort installedon -descending

You could play with this to restrict the list to installed today, or today-5, etc. You can also output to csv.

There is also a PS module talked about here:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2012/11/08/use-a-powershell-module-to-run-windows-update/

scaredoftests

We use SCCM at work. Sometimes, it catches them all. However, we do have to look up the updates that fall through the cracks and we fail the STIGS. I hate when a few of the updates fail and either you can reinstall or have to go to the repository again and download/reinstall.

kohr-ah

WSUS, SCCM, or also Kaseya.

When I worked at an MSP about 2 years ago we'd installed Kaseya on their servers SOLELY for updates and it tells you the updates you want to perform. Screen cap then for later and push.

** Note Kaseya is expensive though

Kopite_21

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all your reply's, really some great info you have given me.

White Wizard

Should implement Kaseya or SolarWinds N-able for software management of patches, AV, remote control, scripting, and so on.

Expensive solutions but you have to consider how much time you are spending manually inputting Kb numbers onto a spreadhseet compared to a set it and forget type of solution.

blargoe

BornToBeMild wrote: »

You can enable clipboard sharing in Remote Desktop or even better enable the "map local drives" option. Then you can create a file on the server, and save it to your local drive. You could use Powershell to list installed updates:

Get-Hotfix | Sort InstalledOn -desc

The sort option fails if you don't have the U.S. date format, so a more global (but more complicated) version is:

Get-HotFix | Select description,hotfixid,installedby,@{l="InstalledOn";e={[DateTime]::Parse($_.psbase.properties"installedon"].value,$([System.Globalization.CultureInfo]::GetCultureInfo("en-US")))}} | sort installedon -descending

You could play with this to restrict the list to installed today, or today-5, etc. You can also output to csv.

There is also a PS module talked about here:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2012/11/08/use-a-powershell-module-to-run-windows-update/

The get-hotfix cmdlet also works with the -computername switch, so you could loop through a list of server names and use export-csv to **** the above command to a csv file.