Patch Management

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Windows Server 2012 is a dynamic piece of software as it is constantly evolving. These improvements are available to users in the form of Windows Updates and patches. The results of an audit can show that without proper monitoring our system can slowly become obsolete, less productive, and potentially out of Government compliance. Microsoft is constantly making improvements or fixing bugs through a series of updates. Some of the updates are very important to keep products like Windows Server 2012 up to date and secure. Other updates may be labeled as recommended or optional from Microsoft. “Microsoft routinely releases security updates on the second Tuesday of each month, commonly known as Patch Tuesday” (Regan, 2013) With the abundance and frequency of patches it’s important for our organization to manage them in an efficient and organized manner so that we maintain the highest levels of productivity while minimizing system downtime.
Most home users are familiar with Windows Update and the basics of how it works. In a corporate environment like ours with 50 servers Windows Update is just not effective as we would have to manage it on every single server individually.
Windows Update Management
For our purposes using something called WSUS or Windows Server Update Services is the most appropriate vehicle in patch management. WSUS is included with Server 2012 and gives us the ability to manage updates for all of our servers from one location. There is another product called System Center Configuration Manager or CCM that could be used in lieu of WSUS and offers much of the same capabilities. SCCM has an associated cost and doesn’t offer enough of a reason to make the investment so in my opinion WSUS is the best solution for our org...

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...reas for improvement. MMC has a feature called Performance Monitor that is specifically designed to monitor the types of performance indicators we should be looking for.
Using WSUS allows us to implement a Windows Update management system that includes a process for updating and installing patches on a regular monthly basis as well as a procedure to test those updates before we push them out to all of our servers company wide. WSUS should become an integral part of our network management plan. In addition MMC allows us the ability to have granular control of our system performance by monitoring the servers through the Performance Monitor module. WSUS combined with MMC will give us the most up to date an efficiently performing network that we can imagine.

Works Cited

Regan, Patrick. (2013). Administering Windows Server 2012. Hoboken, NJ:
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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