Installing and Patching Software

This article was adapted from TechSoup's MaintainIT Project, an effort funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to gather and distribute stories around maintaining and supporting public computers.

Software is the big payoff. It’s one of the primary reasons we all use a computer to begin with, but it can also be a huge source of frustration and wasted time. To minimize your trouble, consider how you’ll address software deployment and patch management throughout your office.

Why Concern Yourself with Software Installation?

• The need to be efficient and save time. As with any major, recurring activity, you’re investing a lot of time in software installation, and anything you can do to make it more effective and efficient is worth thinking about.

• The need for easier maintenance. When you automate this process, your software has the same settings on every computer, and it’s installed to the same directory. This type of consistency will make it much easier to troubleshoot problems later on.

Key Actions to Consider

• Consider a phased rollout of new software or major software upgrades.

• Use an asset management program to keep track of where you have software installed and related information concerning license agreements and activation keys.

Software Testing and Phased Rollouts

Ideally we’d hire someone to spend weeks testing every new application we install in our organizations, but realistically, we often have to rely on the manufacturer for due diligence and hope for the best. And no matter how much testing you’ve done, your staff, interns, and volunteers will still find some glitches that you and the vendor didn’t catch. To mitigate the effects of these problems, you can roll out your new software slowly. Install it on a few targeted computers and let those end users know that they’re your guinea pigs. Or install it for an entire department. If any problems arise, you’ll hear about it from a few individuals rather than your entire organization.

Systems Management Software

Walking from machine to machine with an install CD is “so 1998.” As with many other routine activities, software installation can be largely automated these days. Systems management software is a type of software that bundles together several different utilities that can make an administrator’s life easier. For example, it lets you specify standard, scripted answers to all of the questions that normally come up during the setup wizard. You generally roll up these preferences into an installer file (also known as a software package) and then deploy it to all of your computers. This is sometimes called an unattended installation because once you start the process, it finishes on its own without your intervention.

With most systems management software, you don’t even have to visit the computers you’re trying to install to. After you’ve created the installer package, the systems management software will push it out to the computers you specify on your network and start the process automatically from your server. Alternatively, you can let end users initiate the install process. This way, staff who don’t need the software won’t waste a valuable license. Systems management software also handles a wide variety of other administrative tasks, such as patch management, asset management, and network monitoring. If you’re interested in learning more, take a look at the Wikipedia article on the topic and the accompanying list of software. Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager and Novell’s ZENworks are two popular systems management suites. Qualified organizations can purchase System Center Configuration Manager from TechSoup for $52. In a Windows Active Directory environment, you can also use Group Policy and MSI files to deploy software, though this requires some in depth knowledge to accomplish.

Advantages of Systems Management Software

• You (or your IT department) tweak the software settings once rather than typing them in at every machine.

• You answer the questions in the installation wizard once.

• The software you’ve deployed is the same on all the machines in your organization. If you install the software on each machine individually, you often end up with differences in each installation, which can make the software harder to support.

• You can decide which machines receive the new software, based on who the end user is, or based on how much power and disk space the computer has.

• You can specify what time of day the installation occurs.

Other Software Installation Tools

Software installers (often used with Windows systems) and package managers (often used with Linux/Unix systems) can also help you with software rollouts, but they’re not as powerful as a systems management suite. They allow you to pre-configure your software and create a standard installation, but you usually can’t push the package out so that it runs automatically on all your machines. Instead, you have to carry the installation files around on a CD or download them from a network location. InstallShield and Wise Package Studio are two programs of this type.

Software Asset Management

Whatever system you have in place for tracking software licenses, you need to activate it when you install new software. As soon as possible, record the number of licenses you’ve purchased, the number of copies you’ve installed and the location of the installed copies. Also, be sure to keep track of your installation CDs, passwords, and license keys. Read Managing Your Organization’s Technology Assets for more on this topic.

Patch Management

In between major releases of a program, software vendors release dozens of small patches to fix problems and close security loopholes. Some applications can be set to automatically download and install these patches, but IT departments often reject this approach due to concerns about compatibility. Before they allow a new piece of code into the organization, IT wants to make sure that it won’t corrupt the operating system or cause critical software to malfunction. Also, depending on how the computers are set up, end users may be able to turn off these automatic updates. Patch management software is a more centralized, reliable solution. Again, some programs are designed specifically for patch management, but, in many cases, patch management software will come as part of a systems management software suite. If you’re interested in learning more, check out How to Handle Patch Management and the patch management articles on Microsoft’s website. Also, WindowsSecurity.com has reviewed some of the better-known patch management tools.

Conclusion

Making conscientious decisions about the tools you use to help manage your software systems, can ensure that you’re using your software assets wisely and keeping regular software security patches up-to-date. Using standardized and easily deployed tools to manage software installation, asset management, and patch updates can streamline your processes, ensure consistent rollout of software and patches, and save you some valuable time and create reliable, functioning systems.