# Server patch managemnet - Ideas...
**URL:** https://forums.suse.com/t/server-patch-managemnet-ideas/25763
**Category:** SLES Configure-Administer
**Created:** [June 19, 2014, 12:23pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/server-patch-managemnet-ideas/25763 "2014-06-19T12:23:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ddgaikwad](https://forums.suse.com/u/ddgaikwad)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2014, 12:23pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/server-patch-managemnet-ideas/25763/1 "2014-06-19T12:23:36Z")
Hi Guys,
We would be patching our SLES 11 servers to the latest available patches.
To accomplish this we have setup a SMT server which would act as a repository.
Is there any specific process which we would need to follow to patch all our servers?
Are there any precautions which need to be taken in this process.
Thank you,
-ddgaikwad
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### Author:  [@ab1](https://forums.suse.com/u/ab1)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2014, 2:31pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/server-patch-managemnet-ideas/25763/2 "2014-06-19T14:31:41Z")
Nothing comes to mind. As long as your SLE servers are pointed to SMT
nothing should be different from regular patches other than the speed of
download which is likely much faster since, presumably, SMT is local to
the servers.
–
Good luck.
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### Author:  [@mikewillis](https://forums.suse.com/u/mikewillis)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2014, 2:54pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/server-patch-managemnet-ideas/25763/3 "2014-06-19T14:54:56Z")
What ab said.
I use SMT to maintain a local mirror of updates for SLED and on my machines I set this in /etc/zypp/zypp.conf
> [@](#):
>
> download.use\_deltarpm = false
At some point in the past I worked out it was quicker for the machines to download the full rpms than download delta rpms and then do what’s required to use them, which can involve a lot of disk activity. (I haven’t bothered to see if that’s still true when using an SSD rather than spinning metal.)
Depending on how many machines you have and the bandwidth available to your SMT server, you may want to add a degree of randomization to when machines grab updates so they don’t all try and do it at the same time.
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### Author:  [@ddgaikwad](https://forums.suse.com/u/ddgaikwad)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2014, 4:25pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/server-patch-managemnet-ideas/25763/4 "2014-07-01T16:25:54Z")
[QUOTE=mikewillis;22080]What ab said.
I use SMT to maintain a local mirror of updates for SLED and on my machines I set this in /etc/zypp/zypp.conf
At some point in the past I worked out it was quicker for the machines to download the full rpms than download delta rpms and then do what’s required to use them, which can involve a lot of disk activity. (I haven’t bothered to see if that’s still true when using an SSD rather than spinning metal.)
Depending on how many machines you have and the bandwidth available to your SMT server, you may want to add a degree of randomization to when machines grab updates so they don’t all try and do it at the same time.[/QUOTE]
Hi Mikewillis,
All our servers are still using good old spinning metal, I would go with the randomisations as suggested to keep the load at a lower level on the SMT server, since its only server we have configured at the moment…
-ddgaikwad