Automated Purging of Disabled/Retired/Obsolete Patches

[JasonB1]

Currently the ZCM/ZPM content repo for all satellites are growing every month with each release of Security Patches. When a Patch is disabled, retired or obsolete these patches remain in the content repo on the satellite servers with no way to remove it unless we specify on each bundle to no replicate the content.

For ZCM content that we package, we have the ability to retire applications when new version are released or the app is no longer used. This is done by moving between folders that indicate what content should be replicated. With ZPM content we are unable to move bundle and is not supported.

Finding bundles related to the ZPM patch view can be confusing, because there may be various releases of the patch under the same name.

Our Satellite servers a running out of disk space and we are urgently trying to find a way to clean up Content-Repo that is not required.

I am suggesting that ZPM has an automated process to clean up retire/disabled/obsolete patch content.

This could be by specifying a folder to retire content that replicates differently to active patches, or removing content completely.

We will be able to manage the content repo far better and reduce impact on Server Satellites that are running out of disk space.

[DarrinV]

This idea is implemented in the ZENworks 11.4.2 release. A new Patch Content Cleanup option (ZCC > Configuration > Patch Management > Subscription Service Content Download) automatically deletes the content for all patches that have been disabled for a certain length of time (a wait period). You configure the wait period, either 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, or 5 years.