Patch Manager Test Center

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Patches should always be tested in a lab or on a test machine prior to being deployed on production machines where problems and conflicts might impact your business operations. The Test Center feature allows you to choose a system in your environment to act as a model or "reference" that you can compare other systems against and use to test patches BEFORE releasing them to production.

There are two general uses for the Test Center.

• Case 1: You can use the Test Center to remediate one or more target systems to match a reference "gold standard" system. You can use this to replicate a configuration or "bulk patch" a system to a proven standard.
• Case 2: You can choose a model production system as the reference (perhaps one of a group of systems configured consistently, such as one of ~50 sales machines), then choose a system within your test lab as the target and remediate it to match exactly (both patching and rolling back as necessary). Maintain the test system and use it to install, test, and verify proper function of all patches and service packs before deploying to production systems.

1. Click on the Test Center button (or choose Tools>Test Center from the menu or press F9).

2. From the Scan Description drop-down list, select a saved analysis and click Load.

3. From the drop-down list, select a system to serve as the reference system.

Tip: The Reference system is the production system you wish to copy or mimic for testing purposes.

4. Select the row(s) of the desired target system(s) and click Compare.

Tips: The Target system is the test system you will match to your reference system and use to test patches and hotfixes. For an overview that baselines the reference against multiple target systems, use the CTRL or SHIFT keys to select multiple rows before comparing.

5. Use the lower pane to compare the reference to the target(s) by product.

6. When you are ready for a detailed comparison of two systems, click Show Summary in one of the rows above.

7. Use the plus signs to expand and the column headings to sort the results.

Tip: Items marked install/uninstall indicate that the version mismatch requires a user decision on which will be standard.

8. If you wish to match the reference and target systems according to the summary, click Push (and follow the instructions for installing patches).

9. If you wish to write the summary out to an HTML file, click Save As.

10. Click Cancel to close the Summary and OK to close the Test Center dialog.