Maintaining a set of (virtual) windows XP machines

Posted by Frank Meulenaar on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Frank Meulenaar
Published on 2010-03-29T11:46:04Z Indexed on 2010/03/29 11:53 UTC
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Windows

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virtualization

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updates

I have a small set (currently 3, going to 6, not going to be more than 10) of (virtual, vmware workstation) windows XP machine's. They are similar but not exactly the same.

I'm currently rolling out windows updates etc by hand: start machine 1, update, close, etc; I'd like to review the updates first before the clients can install them. Incidentally there are also other updates to be performed: changes some files on all machines, install new Java versions, etc.

What's a good way of doing this automatic? I tried to search for this but things like Active Directory seem overkill to me.

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