SolarWinds Patch Manager Software

Looks after our customers

Pros

We have used this software for a while now to manage patches for them, and system monitoring. All in all, so far this is great. It is set to patch customers on a fortnightly basis, split across groups. It has also alerted us to hardware failures or customer that are running out of storage space.

Cons

Can be a bit awkward to navigate around, but once used a few times you know where parts are located.

Solarwinds Patch Manager

Good experience. Has nice capabilities to create tasks such as performing update checks on client systems and staging updates prior to the execution time. this saves bandwidth when updates occur and allows for a more reliable and consistent success rate. There are other almost hidden capabilities with this software too such as auditing all machine specific information on each client system through inventory tasks that are scheduled. IT also allows for wake on lan updates to ensure all clients are patched - Even if they are powered off -

Pros

This product uses an agent that you push to each client. The agent allows for much better control over windows update processing than Windows/WSUS does natively.

Cons

There are so many logos and symbols that are hard to understand - the documentation is not great at explaining a lot of the terminology involved in windows updates. Solarwinds assumes you already know this stuff.
this software seems very old and the code has not changed much at all since Solarwinds acquired it many years ago now.

Too complex to be deployed

Great idea implementation to automate 3rd party updates application. However in my case, I wasn't able to get it to work. I was only able to successfully deploy updates in a single site environment, but wasn't able to expand it to all the sites. After days of help, support team had to acknowledge that the product wasn't chosen right for my environment.

Pros

Support. I've had nothing but problems with this software, when I was trying to get it to work in my multiple site environment. Support team was very attentive and helpful, trying to help me to overcome the problems. Apparently, my environment was too complex for this solution.

Cons

Complexity. The software may work well in a single site environment, however in my case with 10+ sites with WSUS at each location I wasn't able to get it to work at all.

Big Name with lots of products

Pros

It did what it said. It was easy to set up and use.

Cons

Their support was less than willing to help me during an issue i was having while using the free trial. I lost all interest in the product for that one reason. I did love the product but if I can't get support then what is the use of the product really. Also, signing up for the free trial apparently give them the right to email you multiple times per day about spam.

admin review

Pros

integrated well with other solarwind products

Cons

did not like 3rd party very much, and required constant supervision

Exceptional tool with great features and cost effictive

Great product and make the patch manager process fully automated

Pros

Product support variety of platform and it is easy to implement and support.
Price of the product is low as compared to other product available in the market
Easy to integrate with SCCM and other tools

Cons

The product cannot be installed on Linux platform. Does not support legacy OS patching

Decent product, but not great

It's a good product for what it is. But there are WAY better solutions out there to do what Patch Manager does, and for far cheaper.

Pros

Allows you to package third party software to be deployed with WSUS.

Cons

It depends solely on WSUS. That of course includes all the problems associated with WSUS. Slowness is one big one. You can automate the Cleanup Wizard, but that has it's own problems, which Patch Manage doesn't solve. You still need yet another product from another vendor to solve that problem.

Super Easy to use

Pros

Support at solarwinds is not over seas, very nice to explain issues and not have to repeat yourself three times. The user cookbooks are very well done, and make it easy to get up and going with relative ease.

Cons

The cost is a major factor here, there are some free solutions out there but you just dont get the support SolarWinds has.

Robust Patch Management System, Great for MSPs

Tech support is amazing, especially with their "tech walks" where they'll have a technician walk you through certain features.

Pros

Extremely robust patch management system that scales well for big MSPs and small businesses alike. It is very good at automating

One of the Best Patch Management software!

Better understanding of our security issues regarding to unpatched or vulmerable systems, overall a very good product

Pros

*- automatization of patches and updates is a bliss with this software.
*- Suitable for large eviroments or small ones,.
*- It keep leveled information with WSUS.

Cons

*- Devices loosing conection with the console, need to re-install the agent.
*-Not very user friendly at the begining, the guise is something you must have in hand untill to familiarize to it.
*-

I can't believe how much this has made my life easy

Pros

This software takes WSUS and dominates it, that is the best way I can explain it. The reports you can get are accurate and amazing. This is truly a magical patch management software

Cons

I wish that it could be easier for some newer feature updates to be updated on the actual software itself perhaps a way for it to "check-in" and update directly to solarwinds through an optional interface

If you do not have patch manager then you are not doing it right...

Pros

allows for non windows applications to be patched and installed with Windows updates WSUS. It simplifies the update interface but still keeps true to WSUS

Cons

It was harder to install and configure correctly. Once it was done its a wonderful tool but can be a challenge to install the first time.

Patch the easy way.

It's the best way for IT Administrator's to start moving to cloud.

Pros

I have been using this software for over 4 years and every year it get's better and better. Patch updating is so simple, that all you do is setup once and it automatically adapts to roles for any other device you add onto your console.

Cons

Every once in a while some devices, loose connection or is mis-configured, but after a few tweaks your back to patching as usual. Which is setup up and monitor if devices are patching.

Patch Manager is a must have for any environment

Pros

Patch Manager has been a critical part of our network management. We are able to keep all of our third party applications up to date, where we used to have to rely on our users to allow the updates to run. Patch Manager has also allowed us to remove Admin rights from our end users.

Cons

Patch Manager can be a bit difficult to use at first. We had to rely heavily on the administrator guide to get started. Make sure you can devote time to following the procedures in the manual.

Patch Manager makes patching servers easier

We've had issues with Microsoft WSUS by itself. Overlaying Solar Winds Patch Manager onto our WSUS server has really helped with our server patching.