Server Patch Management Software

With vulnerabilities on a never-ending rise, server patching is quintessential in bolstering the network security of your enterprise. Being business-critical machines, planning downtimes for server maintenance is undoubtedly a hassle. However, with efficient server patch management software such as Patch Manager Plus, admins venture freely into patching servers, by leveraging flexible deployment policies and reboot/shutdown policies.

What is server patching?

Server patching or server patch management refers to the process of deploying OS and third-party application updates to the servers in your enterprise. With servers playing a crucial role, it is imperative that they are patched seamlessly, with minimum downtime.

Why is Server Patch Management important?

The time you allot for Server maintenance is limited because you can't keep your machines on hold for a long time as it affects your business and productivity. Server downtime is a threat to every sysadmin. Do you know that there are high chances for your server to crash when you don't patch them regularly? Because if you don't, your server will freeze leading to a severe downtime. In some cases, your Server might slow down resulting in heavy traffic, thus affecting your overall productivity. This is why we often stress on the importance of server patch management and the impacts of not patching them. This is where the need for a server patch management tool arises.

How Patch Manager Plus provides Server Patch Management?

• Server patch management is achieved by installing and patching all the servers in your IT environment. Patch Manager Plus supports server patching: it identifies which servers and workstations need to be patched and patches them on detection.
• We support patching of server applications too. This process starts with a thorough scan, followed by downloading of the missing patches and then these patches are rolled out to the servers for deployment.
• We also provide an option for testing and patching physical and virtual servers. Therefore, you can gain complete control over your servers with our server patching tool. This helps to keep your data secure and up to date.

How to choose the right Server patch management software?

When you're looking for the right server patching tool, you should mainly focus on these two criteria:

1. The Server patching tool you're about to opt in must support all of your networks in both local and remote offices.
2. This Server patching tool must support major Operating Systems like Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Patch Manager Plus supports the above-mentioned criteria and is undoubtedly the right Server Patch Management software for Enterprises.

So, how does Server patching work in Patch Manager Plus?

Patch Manager Plus has the following steps in its patch management process: synchronizing, scanning, downloading, testing, deploying approved Server patches to their respective computers, and finally generating reports. For detailed workflow, continue reading:

• Synchronization: All the Server patch information are collected from vendor sites and is fed into the patch database. This patch database is then synchronized with the Patch Manager Plus server.
• Detect: The next step is to identify the Servers that require these patches. Patch Manager Plus automatically scans the Servers in the network to detect the missing patches.
• Download: All missing patches are downloaded from vendor sites. This includes security updates, non-security updates, service packs, rollups, optional updates, and feature packs.
• Test and approve: The downloaded server patches are first tested in virtual servers; deploying untested patches in a production environment can be risky - some server patches and updates may lead to post-deployment problems like compatibility issues, which only make the admin's job tougher if incompatible patches and updates require uninstallation. The server patches are approved only if they cause no issues post-deployment.
• Deployment: With flexible deployment policies, you can not only select the deployment window but create patching policies as well. This patch management policy provides access to multiple deployment settings to help you decide when to deploy a server patch and how.
• Report: After successful deployment, reports are automatically generated and the information is sent to the server. It supports customized reports which help you to filter data and share results with others in a variety of formats easily.

Benefits of using Patch Manager Plus for Server Patching Process

• Patch Manager Plus helps you to achieve Server performance optimization thereby reducing Server downtime.
• It handles all the features effectively and manages servers' criticality like excluding server for the reboot.
• Patch Manager Plus supports Server Application patching - detects the missing server patches, tests them on Virtual Servers and rolls them out into the Servers for deployment.

FAQs

1) What is patching the server?

Server patching refers to the process of deploying OS and third-party application updates to the servers in your enterprise, to enhance the server security and performance.

2) Why server patching is required?

A proper server patch management process ensures server security by installing the latest patches and security updates. In addition, it also ensures optimal performance of the servers with minimum downtime.

3) What is a server patch?

A server patch is a software update containing the latest security updates, bug fixes, or feature enhancements for the server operating systems (such as Windows Server 2022) or the server applications.