Quickly find Patch Policies where all Advertisements in a policy have been disabled

Products

• Patch Management Solution
• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

Windows updates can use a large amount of space on site servers. This provides a way to help identifiy policies that are no longer needed so they can be deleted and disabled allowing the space to be reclaimed.

Typically advertisements are disabled because the associated software update has been superseded. When all advertisements are disabled there is no longer any reason to keep the policy and associated files on the server.

Environment

ITMS 8.x

Cause

Windows updates can use a large amount of space on site servers.

Resolution

The following script can be used in an SQL report in the Symantec Management platform.  

The report then provides the ability to multi-select Software Update policies and delete them.

After this is done follow the steps in Clean up unused Patch Packages off the Notification Server and Package Servers to complete the cleanup process.

Script to be used in the report:

select i.Guid _ItemGuid, substring (i.Name, 0, 50), count (distinct ir.ChildItemGuid) 'TotalAdverts', sum (cast (ia2.Enabled as int)) 'EnabledAdverts', i.createdDate from vItem i join Itemreference ir on ir.ParentItemGuid = i.Guid and ir.Hint = 'swuadvert' join Item i2 on i2.Guid = ir.childItemGuid join ItemActive ia on ia.Guid = i.Guid join ItemActive ia2 on ia2.Guid = i2.Guid where i.ClassGuid = '49fe4304-e09d-4382-9026-715868ffb856' group by i.Name, i.Guid, i.createdDate having sum (cast (ia2.Enabled as int)) = 0 order by [EnabledAdverts], i.CreatedDate