Distribution of Systems by Service Pack

In large Windows-based environments, administrators often find it painful to keep track of service packs issued by Microsoft at frequent intervals, and to make sure that the systems in their environment are updated with their latest service packs. Fatal errors in operation can occur on a Windows system, if a required service pack is not applied on it. The first step towards avoiding such adversities, is to identify the systems on which a service pack is yet to be deployed. To enable administrators to perform this identification quickly and easily, the eG Configuration Management console provides the DISTRIBUTION OF SYSTEMS BY SERVICE PACK page.

This page can be accessed by the following menu sequence, Inventory->System Distribution->By Service Pack.

To use this page to view the systems with/without a specific service pack, do the following:

  1. Select an operating system from the Operating System list as depicted in Figure 1.
  2. Then, select the required service pack from the Service Pack list. If multiple service packs have been discovered from the environment, then, the All option will be selected from the Service Pack list, by default as depicted in Figure 1 . If only a single service pack exists, then the same will be displayed by default in the Service Pack list.

  3. Next, click the SUBMIT button.

    Figure 23

    Figure 1 : Distribution of systems across the service packs

  4. This will invoke a distribution bar graph, which reveals the number of systems on which each available service pack has been deployed. Below this bar graph, you will find the complete list of systems on which each service pack pre-exists, and also those systems on which a service pack is yet to be deployed.

To view details pertaining to specific service pack, do the following:

  1. Select an operating system from the Operating System list as depicted in Figure 2.
  2. Then, select the required service pack from the Service Pack list.

  3. Next, click the SUBMIT button.

    Figure 24

    Figure 2 : Distribution of systems for a specific service pack

  4. The resulting report will not include the distribution graph. Instead, you will find the complete list of systems on which the chosen service pack pre-exists, and those on which the same service pack has not been applied yet.
  5. Clicking on the individual system will take you to the INVENTORY BY SYSTEM page, where you can view the basic configuration details of the system.