Best Method to Update 3rd Party Products Using SUP

[guest]

After just starting a new job, I have been given a few servers and asked to set up an SCCM 2012 installation from scratch. I've already set up the core of the application(s) and am starting to configure now. Recently, I installed SCUP 2011 which prompted a question I wanted to ask here.

SCCM natively patches Microsoft products via SUP, SCUP allows you to patch other apps through SUP, but the only catalogs I could find were from Adobe, Dell, & HP. I see that I can create / import custom catalogs and or patches, but can't find any and don't know if it would be worth it. I did find a site which was supposed to have a few catalogs, but it redirected me to VMWare as they had seemed to have bought it :(

When using SCCM previously, I used SUP to patch all Microsoft apps, but for patching Adobe, Java, Frontmotion Firefox, etc; I just created an updated software package and deployed it which worked fine for me - perhaps better as I could edit the new versinos before deploying.

With all of that being said, I have the following questions, please...

1. Are there any other catalogs that can be used with SCCM/SCUP? Where are they? I'm looking for ones for Java, Firefox, and any other mainstream apps if possible.

2. As for making you own updates / catalogs, would it be faster and/or more efficient to do the software package deployment like I mentioned above or not?

3. When updating Adobe Reader (for example) before using SCUP, I edited the MSI so that it would not attempt to check & update the locally installed client once deployed. Is something like this possible with SCUP & Adobe's catalog, does the update retain previous client settings, or are the settings defaulted at each update?

Thanks for your help!


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[guest]

1. Unfortunately, most third-parties are not interested in supporting the ConfigMgr eco-system and so do not provide their own update catalogs even their products are very high on the list for security holes in most enterprises (yes, that's a blatant shot at Apple and Oracle).

There are three different vendors, each with a slightly different approach, that provide commerical catalogs for other third-party products: Shavlik SCUPdates (part of EMC now), Eminintware (part of SolarWinds now), and Secunia.

2. Software Updates is provides many advantages including compliance scanning without having to explicitly create collections and adverts and is a more natural fit (IMO) for rolling out updates.

3. Not totally sure what behavior you modified the MSI to do, but you really should never edit a vendor provided MSI, that's what MSTs are for. When creating updates in SCUP, you can provide applicability rules which may satify the the behavior you are after though.


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