Free tool to patch your servers
Remote reboot X is an awesome piece of software, better yet its free!!
Doug has done a great job with the software it uses pexec to remotely connect to the servers and run the commands to pull down the patches, install, then reboot the server.
One thing to watch for if you?ve never used psexec before run it from the command line once before you use Remote reboot x because psexec requires you to accept a EULA first.
Some of the additional features of RRx include
Viewing the patch installation log on each server, its saved to C:\RRx but can be viewed from the RRx GUI
You can pull the last reboot time on the server to make sure the patching process with reboot completed correctly.
Connect as another server, you have the ability to connect to the servers as a different user context than which the RRx program is running (if you do this the username and password are sent in clear text across the network)
The only issue I have with RRx right now is you have to add your list of servers into a text box, you can?t import from a file. I know Doug is working on this issue, but this is a side project for him so its only in his spare time.
Give the program a try and see how much time it saves you. It works with WSUS or from the Windows update site. It will download the patches from where every the server is configure to pull from.