I’m not aware of a specific product for patching virtual machines. VMware now has an Update Manager plug-in to VirtualCenter for patching ESX hosts and VMs but I don’t think it has the capability to stagger patch deployments. If you are using Microsoft WSUS you can create multiple group policies with different update dates/times and then assign them to groups of servers. For example create 3 group policies and assign 1/3 of your VM’s to each one like below.

Policy 1 - Sun, Thu 3:00am
Policy 2 - Mon, Fri 3:00am
Policy 3 - Tue, Sat 3:00am

I’m not sure about other patching products like BigFix and Patchlink but they may also have controls that let you throttle and stagger your patch deployment.

Eric

This is a nice concise checklist of the key things to take into consideration with VMs all branching from the base conclusion that one should not impact the underlying physical hardware too much.

With off-the-shelf patch management software (partchlink et al) this is tough to do - have you any advice about how to configure or better still what automation tools to use for patch management?

Thanks

Steve