Apply setting to Tab's and other features

[mchaelnilsen]

Hello,

We patch over 200 VM’s using BatchPatch and its an awesome product 🙂

Our workflow is

Create multiple tabs say week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4.

Inside each tab, we have the 01 version of a server, for example TS01.

Nearly every server has redundancy. Our Goal is to never have a ‘service’ down while patching, like Exchange or SharePoint, Citrix Desktop for example.

Based on this, would it be possible to:-

1. Apply setting to a Tab rather then Row or Multiple row’s. So say on the week 1 Tab, you want to bring on another TS-USA-01 server for patching, we can just add this server to the week 1 Tab and it gets all the schedule and job queues applied to the tab?

2. Add extra functionally around the send email notification either in the job queue or even better, apply being able to apply email notification at the tab level, so when all patching is about to start, schedule a email notification with a list of servers and the time scheduled to be patched and the updates going to be applied, similar to what you get now with the $grid option

Then again once all patching is complete, send a email saying these have been patched

At the moment to get similar functionality, in batchpatch I have a fake server at the start and at the end of the list and each on has a custom email notification set to $grid and is scheduled to run before / after the actual server schedules.

So I get a $grid email before they run letting service desk know whats happing over night and another in morning service desk know of any issues.

3. It would also be good to be able to lock columns, so say you only want to see hostname windows update message, progress, services not started… This is more for the report to be sent in the above point, so its cleaner.

Hope this all makes sense 🙂

I would love to know your thoughts

Thanks,

Michael

[doug]

Hi Michael – I’m glad to hear that you like the product. 🙂

Thank you for the suggestions. I have a few questions below.

1. We will consider this for a future build. I understand what you are describing and why it would be convenient to have.

2. I understand that you currently use a “dummy” row setup to send a $grid before and after patching. This makes sense. However, I’m not quite clear on what you are suggesting/requesting. How is what you are requesting/suggesting different from what you are currently doing to accomplish the task? I’m curious to hear as much detail as you’re able to provide. Are you just saying that you want a simpler way to accomplish the same thing because creating “dummy” rows doesn’t feel like an elegant solution? (admittedly, it’s not particularly elegant, but it works 🙂 Or do you have something in mind that provides a different functionality?

3. I understand what you mean by “locking” the columns. We will consider this for a future build. However, in the meantime there are two ways to accomplish this task.

If you go to ‘Tools > Settings > Grid Preferences > Allow BatchPatch to unhide columns automatically’ you can either uncheck the box altogether so that BatchPatch does not automatically unhide any columns, or you can click on the button that says “except these columns,” which allows you to configure BatchPatch to auto-unhide only certain columns. If you uncheck the box altogether, this is the same as “locking” the grid, like you are suggesting. However, it applies to all grids, not just the active grid. Then you simply need to make sure the columns that you want to see are manually made visible before the patching begins. They will remain visible during the patching, but no new columns will be auto-opened.

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

Hi Michael – I emailed you (as you had requested), but I never heard back. I deleted the posting where you asked me to email you because it contained your email address in plain text, and I didn’t want you to start getting spammed (trust me, your address would have been scraped quickly by numerous bots :).

-Doug

[IvanaVuki]

Hi mchaelnilsen,

we want to implement now all the servers to BatchPatch, so that we have an automatised way of updating servers.
I saw this in your post:

Our Goal is to never have a ‘service’ down while patching, like Exchange or SharePoint, Citrix Desktop for example.

How did you configure your Exchange servers?
Because before even checking for updates, you have to put Exchange Server in maintenance mode, check for the databases, check for updates, update and then restart and then all the same with the other Exchange server?
How did you accomplish that? With scripts? But how do I even execute them in BatchPatch?

[Author]

Posts