Technology & Tools
Adaptiva OneSite 4.5 Adds Smart Patching to SCCM
A new version of the Adaptiva systems management software aims to simplify the way IT pros issue patches via Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). The new Update Manager solution in OneSite 4.5 issues customized smart patches for those who tend to skip product updates.
Adaptiva claims OneSite 4.5 is designed to ease the problem of large-scale SCCM client deployments without having to maintain the extra hardware to do that or slow down wide area network (WAN) traffic to distribute the SCCM updates. Now, IT pros don't have to think about patch sequences when keeping the OneSite product itself up-to-date.
"Customers will skip several updates and then update maybe every six months," explained Deepak Kumar, Adaptiva founder and CTO. "If they are skipping nine versions, they now have nine updates that need to be deployed in an exact sequence to be successful. If you have 400,000 machines, that's difficult to do."
The new Update Manager automates that process. "This comes from watching Microsoft customers struggle through, of all things, Microsoft patches," Kumar commented when it was mentioned that Microsoft could benefit from such a technique.
Kumar is noteworthy not just for being the Adaptiva founder, but he's also had a hand at being one of the original designers of the SCCM product when he served at Microsoft. His Bellevue, Wash.-based company now partners with Microsoft, making add-ons to SCCM to support large-scale deployments, ranging from "1,000 to 366,000 clients," according to the company.
The new OneSite 4.5 release now features global roaming capabilities that work across multiple SCCM sites. This feature benefits organizations that service SCCM clients in multiple country zones. As people travel and take their computing devices with them, the system is smart enough to retrieve SCCM content from the local zone, eliminating the potential WAN traffic impact. Kumar said that a Patch Tuesday from Microsoft can represent about 300MB of data to transmit.
Last, OneSite 4.5 includes cache migration improvements: OneSite Virtual SAN technology can now import content from SCCM Server caches, as well as 1E Nomad client caches.
About the Authors
Jeffrey Schwartz is editor of Redmond magazine and also covers cloud computing for Virtualization Review's Cloud Report. In addition, he writes the Channeling the Cloud column for Redmond Channel Partner. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreySchwartz.
Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.