Quick Take: ManageEngine Patch Manager Plus

If you’re looking for a low cost but effective, cloud-based patch management system, ManageEngine’s Patch Manager Plus Cloud edition is pretty good!

https://www.manageengine.com/patch-management/edition-comparison.html

I have been working with ManageEngine for a few years, mostly with on-premise deployments of desktop management tool, DesktopCentral. I have always found their tools to be effective, fairly intuitive to use, and reasonably priced. I was recently searching for a tool to help manage the patching of my family’s computers and came across Patch Manager Plus Cloud (PMP-C) and decided to give it a try. Managing my family’s systems is not much different from managing our own internal infrastructure – completely cloud-based.

I first played with the system in my virtual lab and quickly became comfortable with the tool. Being agent-based, it was a snap to download and install the agent. From there I configured a daily email with the scan, missing patches, system health, and systems requiring reboot reports. The agents started scanning (daily) and the data started flowing in. I found that PMP-C often did a better job reporting about available updates than the applications themselves! While Macs are supported, I only worked with Windows systems for this.

If I wanted to manually download a patch for testing, I could click the Bulletin ID and be provided with a direct download link. For remotely installing a patch, I just checked what I wanted to deploy, and then clicked the Install Patch button and then walk through the deployment wizard. Assuming within the default timeouts, I knew that even if the target machine was off, when next online, it would check-in with the server and then execute the configuration task. Easy peasy as they say.

There are, of course, all sorts of options you can configure for corporate environments, but for my use-case, I was fine with the defaults. The low price tag, free, for up to 25 systems is nice too!