Rolling Review: LANDesk Patch Manager
Posted by
Michael Biddick
May 10, 2008
LANDesk software's Patch Manager is offered on its own and as a component of LANDesk's Security Suite or Management Suite; we tested only Patch Manager. Like the other three tools we've covered thus far in this Rolling Review, LANDesk Patch Manager uses proprietary agents installed on target devices. In testing, Patch Manager provided thorough vulnerability discovery and remediation, as well as a robust array of tools to customize those tasks. LANDesk permits management of end devices via existing directory structures, like Active Directory, or through groups created in the application.
LANDesk also supports a policy-based implementation, where you can define the types of patches you want to install and when. While distributing packages, we could use features like targeted multicast, which minimizes bandwidth consumed, or peer download, which capitalizes on local bandwidth by sharing packages already downloaded by one agent on a given subnet. Pretty cool.
Moreover, these features enable pre-staging of patches, allowing for even more flexibility than the usual scheduling options we've seen. LANDesk also impressed us with Patch Manager's inventory scan. In our environment, it provided a surprisingly thorough physical inventory of servers.
networkcomputing.com/rollingreviews/patch
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