Centralized patching for Mac OSX?

We're working on our Mac patch management strategy/tool use. 99% of our
desktops are windows and we are more familiar with supporting those.
We've been using a monthly "Patch 2nd Tuesday" cycle using WSUS for
windows, internal security scans/RHN/newsgroups for linux/bsd servers,
and manual "software update" on OS X desktops. We also process pressing
security alerts out of that cycle when needed.

Is anyone using System Update Server for Mac OS X?
http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/softwareupdateserver.html

Can you set your clients to automatically install approved updates like
you can with Windows SUS/WSUS? Does it needs to run on a actual apple
server as oppose to serving flies from a different bsd box? Is there a
campus Mac SUS server available for campus clients to use (it's overkill
to run our own OS X server for this)?

While our windows desktops need patches constantly, at least we have our
WSUS server and policies to automatically install the patches we approve
and report their status.

We have a small number of Mac desktops, but visiting each workstation
and approving updates is a hassle. I suppose we could enable ssh and
run softwareupdate from the command-line... possibly we could set a
cronjob to email us automatically if downloaded updates are waiting for
install (since we are out of touch OS X updates)...

What are other people doing?

Thanks,
Mike

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Received on Fri Mar 17 06:04:22 2006