Security Compliance
How to migrate Patch Manager Groups and rules
Sometimes you will need to uninstall Patch Manager and reinstall on a new server. This document shows you how to migrate/recreate Patch Manager Groups and computer rules if you are using these on your existing installation.
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This procedure can be used during Patch Manager Application re-install or fresh install on a new server.
Before proceeding, make a backup of the <install drive>:\Program Files (x86)\SolarWinds\Patch Manager\Server\Templates\computergroups folder on your existing PM Application Server. You may need to reference or copy files contained here.
There are 2 methods you can use to restore the Patch Manager Computer Groups:
METHOD ONE:
1) Select a Patch Manager Computer group
2) Via right-click or right panel, select Computer Group Properties.
3) Click on Export Computers, and save the file with the name of the PM group for ease of migration.
4) Repeat this for each Patch Manager Computer Group
When the new PM server has been installed and WSUS server and Domain have been added, you can recreate the Patch Manager Computer Groups.
1) Create a new Patch Manager Computer Group with the same name as one of the saved files from step 3 above. Do not add any computers
2) Select the group created above.
3) Via right-click or right panel, select Computer Group Properties.
4) Click on Import Computers, and browse to select the saved file from step 3 in section 1 above.
5) Repeat for each PM Computer group you need to restore.
METHOD TWO
1) Delete existing files in <drive>:\\Program Files (x86)\SolarWinds\Patch Manager\Server\Templates\computergroups
2) In the PM Console, create PM group names, but do not add computers. You can reference the saved files for the names; each computer group filename ends with .ecg
3) Once you have the PM group names created, close the PM console
4) Copy files from the saved folder to new live folder <install drive>:\Program Files (x86)\SolarWinds\Patch Manager\Server\Templates\computergroups, replacing all the filenames with the older versions saved from previous PM installation.
5) Open the PM console and confirm that the PM groups are now populated with the desired list of computers.
Once the new PM creates the reference file, you can replace it with an older file, and the contents are updated in the PM console on the new install.
Note: If you have any rules used for Patch Manager Computer groups, you can restore the rules by copying files with the .cgt extension from the saved <install drive>:\Program Files (x86)\SolarWinds\Patch Manager\Server\Templates\computergroups folder. These are the "Add computers using rules" saved files.