Patch Remedy 4 Windows10 Upgrade explained.
Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 2:04 pm
How to use the Windows 10 Version Upgrader in Patch Remedy
We will be describing in the following posts how to use the Windows 10 Upgrade features in the latest Patch Remedy 4.
As of Patch Remedy 4, Plugins4Automate has added a new feature that allows the MSP to upgrade older versions of Windows 10 to the latest version available. There are 2 possible ways to deploy the Windows 10 upgrades, the first way is by selecting the Windows 10 agent(s) from the Windows 10 Upgrade data view and selecting to Upgrade OS now. This will schedule the upgrade script to start on the end agent(s) over the next few minutes. The second way is to select to enable OS upgrades on agent(s) which will cause Patch Remedy on next cycle to launch the upgrade process automatically.
There are some basic setups Patch Remedy will need to get started upgrading Windows 10. You will need to create 2 ISO files from the Media Creation Tool located here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/softwar ... windows10/. You will need to create a 32bit and a 64bit ISO and have each named differently from the other. You will need to have caching share setup at each client location, this is a network share that all agents can access at a given location. We will use this cache location to store the ISO files. During the automated process, Patch Remedy will look at all the agents at a given location set to auto upgrade and will pick one agent to start the process on and the rest of the agents it holds back for 50 minutes. This allows the first agent to download the ISO to the location share, caching it for all the other agents. 50 minutes later the rest of the agents will start looking to see if the ISO is on the network share and if so they will pull that file in and start the upgrades, else the next agent will attempt the downloads until the ISO is present.
Once the ISO is available the agent(s) will mount the ISO and transfer the files to the local system. The process validates that the files exist locally to the agent, then prompts the user if an active desktop is detected. The user will get a total of 3 possible messages. The first is a pop up message on a timer (90 sec) asking if it is OK to upgrade OS at this time. The user must select yes for any upgrades to proceed. If the user selects no, the script will stop and it will be logged in the plugin that user denied update. If the user selects yes, then they will get another popup on a timer (90 sec), asking them to close all open windows and applications. Afterwards a custom splash screen message screen will appear with the MSPs logo and a message from the MSP. This splash screen can be closed by going into task manager on agent and killing the mshta process.
The upgrade will reboot the computer during the upgrade and once the user logs back in the final upgrade setups will complete and the system will now be on Windows 10 latest versions.
Either way you deploy the upgrade (Automation or Manually) the upgrade process is the same and the responses will be the same. All actions get logged in the plugin's log viewer for each agent.
We will be describing in the following posts how to use the Windows 10 Upgrade features in the latest Patch Remedy 4.
As of Patch Remedy 4, Plugins4Automate has added a new feature that allows the MSP to upgrade older versions of Windows 10 to the latest version available. There are 2 possible ways to deploy the Windows 10 upgrades, the first way is by selecting the Windows 10 agent(s) from the Windows 10 Upgrade data view and selecting to Upgrade OS now. This will schedule the upgrade script to start on the end agent(s) over the next few minutes. The second way is to select to enable OS upgrades on agent(s) which will cause Patch Remedy on next cycle to launch the upgrade process automatically.
There are some basic setups Patch Remedy will need to get started upgrading Windows 10. You will need to create 2 ISO files from the Media Creation Tool located here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/softwar ... windows10/. You will need to create a 32bit and a 64bit ISO and have each named differently from the other. You will need to have caching share setup at each client location, this is a network share that all agents can access at a given location. We will use this cache location to store the ISO files. During the automated process, Patch Remedy will look at all the agents at a given location set to auto upgrade and will pick one agent to start the process on and the rest of the agents it holds back for 50 minutes. This allows the first agent to download the ISO to the location share, caching it for all the other agents. 50 minutes later the rest of the agents will start looking to see if the ISO is on the network share and if so they will pull that file in and start the upgrades, else the next agent will attempt the downloads until the ISO is present.
Once the ISO is available the agent(s) will mount the ISO and transfer the files to the local system. The process validates that the files exist locally to the agent, then prompts the user if an active desktop is detected. The user will get a total of 3 possible messages. The first is a pop up message on a timer (90 sec) asking if it is OK to upgrade OS at this time. The user must select yes for any upgrades to proceed. If the user selects no, the script will stop and it will be logged in the plugin that user denied update. If the user selects yes, then they will get another popup on a timer (90 sec), asking them to close all open windows and applications. Afterwards a custom splash screen message screen will appear with the MSPs logo and a message from the MSP. This splash screen can be closed by going into task manager on agent and killing the mshta process.
The upgrade will reboot the computer during the upgrade and once the user logs back in the final upgrade setups will complete and the system will now be on Windows 10 latest versions.
Either way you deploy the upgrade (Automation or Manually) the upgrade process is the same and the responses will be the same. All actions get logged in the plugin's log viewer for each agent.