How to stage patches before applying them

When getting ready to patch servers, you can save a lot of time in the deployment process by staging them on the target(s) prior to performing the actual patching. The following steps show how to achieve this in BMC Server Automation.

These steps were created by Lazar Gersh.

Steps

1. When you run the Patch Remediation Job (the one that creates the Deploy Jobs), in the Deploy Job Options of Patch Remediation Job, set the schedule for Simulate phase to start relatively soon, or whenever you want the staging to occur (for example, during the weekdays).
2. Ensure that the job executes the Stage start right after Simulate.

Do NOT schedule the job to Commit - this is the part that actually performs the patching.

All the Deploy Jobs will run at the scheduled time that you specified (Simulate and Stage).  During the Stage phase, the patches will be copied to the targets.

1. At a later point in time (for example during a change window on the weekend), you can kick off the Batch Job (which was also created during Patch Remediation run).

The Batch Job will simply resume every Deploy Job in the Commit phase. The Commit phase is the only one that performs the actual patch installation.