5.1 Viewing Patches

A patch consists of a description, signatures, and fingerprints required to determine whether the patch is applied or not patched. A patch also consists of associated patch bundles for deploying the patch.The Patches page displays a complete list of all known patches reported by various software vendors. After they are reported and analyzed, the patches are registered for distribution to your ZENworks Server through the ZENworks Patch Subscription Network. The ZENworks Adaptive Agent should be installed on each device to check for known patches. A patch bundle called Discover Applicable Updates (DAU) is then assigned to run on each device on a daily basis to scan for known patches. This task returns the results that are displayed on the Patches page. The results are presented in a table of patch status. The total number of patches is displayed below the table in the bottom left corner.

To view the patches in Patch Management, click the Patch Management tab on the left panel, as shown in the following figure:

Figure 5-1 Patch Management Tab

The patches are displayed, as shown in the following figure:

Figure 5-2 Patches Listed on the Patches Page

NOTE:The Patches page downloads and displays patches only for the operating systems that are running on your managed devices. This process prevents wastage of bandwidth and disk space required to store thousands of unneeded patches in the ZENworks Primary Server database. If you connect a device running a previously undetected operating system, you must initiate replication again so that the Patch Management Server downloads patches for that operating system.