VLM and Update Service: Allow Administrators to control what patches are installed by clients via Update Service

[Jackie_B]

For security reasons, many customers using Volume License Manager to administer licenses to client machines do not authorize users to download and install anything from the web. Therefore, if a critical patch is released, the client machines are unable to download this unless it is distributed by the administrator. It would be useful for the VLM administrator to be able to configure the Update Service such that all Users can run the Update Service but the service has been configured to point to an internal network share rather than an internet location outside the firewall. This way, the administrator could make critical updates and patches available for the client machines and the clients can be notified and install them.

[mmartyn]

This would make the Update Service usable for DOD contractors, saving VLM administrators time while cleanly keeping NI installs up to date with the latest patches and updates. Great suggestion.

[pacome]

This is exactly what I need.

[James@Work]

YES!!
This would certainly make things easier.

AND/OR, let me adjust these settings in the VLM by license instead of globally.  I have licenses many groups and all do not want the same options/restrictions.

[cyro]

Good idea. Problem is if you don't use a VLM but using plenty of different LabVIEW versions in virtual machines per user and every user should update to latest patches. With patches bigger than 100 MB and slow internet connection this is horrifying so most of us don't update but only in case of "must do". Better way could be to provide an additional update manager which runs on a local server and automatically downloads all updates over night. Within this manager you can enable/disable the updates the client can install so you have to change the actual Update Service to get its updates from this local Update Manager.

[crossrulz]

I currently download the updates and them put the update installers in a shared folder.  I then have to tell people that the updates are there.  Having this done with the VLM software would make life so much easier.

[metux]

That's one of the thousand things that decent package managers (eg. apt) do automatically.

Suggestion: properly package the software for the individual target platforms and provide package repositories - drop the silly own installer/updater programs. Let the sysop handle the rest.

--mtx