Patch management settings

To learn how to create a protection plan with the patch management module, refer to "Creating a protection plan". By using the protection plan, you can specify what updates for Microsoft products and other third-party products for Windows OS to automatically install on the defined machines.

The following settings can be specified for the patch management module.

Microsoft products

To install the Microsoft updates on the selected machines, enable the Update Microsoft products option.

Select what updates you want to be installed:

• All updates
• Only Security and Critical updates
• Updates of specific products: you can define custom settings for different products. If you want to update specific products, for each product you can define which updates to install by category, severity, or approval status.

  

Windows third-party products

To install the third-party updates for Windows OS on the selected machines, enable the Windows third-party products option.

Select what updates you want to be installed:

• Only last major updates allows you to install the latest available version of the update.
• Only last minor updates allows you to install the minor version of the update.
• Updates of specific products: you can define custom settings for different products. If you want to update specific products, for each product you can define which updates to install by category, severity, or approval status.

  

Schedule

Define the schedule according to which the updates will be installed on the selected machines.

Schedule the task run using the following events:

• Schedule by time – run a task according to the specified time.
• When user logs in to the system – by default, login of any user will initiate a task run. You can change any user to a specific user account.
• When user logs off the system – by default, logout of any user will initiate a task run. You can change any user to a specific user account.

  Note  The task will not run at a system shutdown because shutting down is not the same as logging out.

• On the system startup – run a task when the operating system starts.
• On the system shutdown – run a task when the operating system shuts down.

Default setting: Schedule by time.

Schedule type:

• Monthly – select in what months on what days to perform the task run.
• Daily – select on which days of a week to run a task.
• Hourly – select on which days of a week and how often to run a task in an hour.

Default setting: Daily.

Start at – you can select at what time to perform the task run.

Default setting: 2PM (on the machine where the software is installed).

Run within a date range – set a date range for when the schedule is effective.

Start conditions define all the conditions that should be simultaneously met to start the task. They are similar to the start conditions for the Backup module which are described in "Start conditions".

The following additional start conditions can be defined:

• If the machine is turned off, run missed tasks at the machine startup
• Prevent the sleep or hibernate mode during task running – this option is effective only for machines running Windows.
• If start conditions are not met, run the task anyway after – specify the period in hours after which the task will be launched anyway.

Reboot after update – define whether reboot is initiated after installing updates:

• Never – reboot will never be initiated after the updates.
• If required – reboot is done only if it is required for applying the updates.
• Always – reboot will be always initiated after the updates. You can always specify the reboot delay.

Do not reboot until backup is finished – if the backup process is running, the machine reboot will be delayed until the backup is completed.

Pre-update backup

Run backup before installing software updates – the system will create an incremental backup of machine before installing any updates on it. If there were no backups created earlier, then a full backup of machine will be created. It allows you to prevent such cases when the installation of updates was unsuccessful and you need to get back to the previous state. For the Pre-update backup option to work, the corresponding machines must have both the patch management and the backup module enabled in a protection plan and the items to back up – entire machine or boot+system volumes. If you select inappropriate items to back up, then the system will not allow you to enable the Pre-update backup option.