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R E V I E W

PatchLink Helps Keep Windows Closed

September 2, 2002
By Patrick Mueller

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How We Tested

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	In this article
	Introduction
	PatchLink Corp. PatchLink Update 3.0
	Other Products Reviewed
	Executive Summary
	Why Patch?
	How We Tested
	A Heap of Trouble
	Microsoft's Patch tools: Incomplete
	Report Card

We deployed the patch-management products in our Chicago Neohapsis partner labs. Each product was installed on a standard Dell Computer Corp. Pentium III OptiPlex with 256 MB of RAM, which provided plenty of horsepower.

We used a mix of Microsoft platforms to emulate a small network. The population included Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 Server. We put each product through its paces by querying the machines for current patch levels and testing any grouping/profiling functions. Next, for each host we chose several patches that would be pushed out. The various reboot functions were verified, and we assessed the end-user experience on the workstations that were being rebooted.

If you're deploying one of these products on a bandwidth-hungry WAN, be sure to test the load placed on the network--only BigFix's and PatchLink's solutions allow some control over bandwidth utilization.