With the ever-expanding device inventory comes a great responsibility, ensuring that all devices are running with the latest updates. This is a critical aspect of device management as it maintains consistency, stability, and most importantly, security across the floor.
It is the IT team’s key responsibility in any organization to implement strategies to ensure smooth, non-disruptive update cycles.
This is where update rings come into play, a powerful strategy to manage the deployment of updates within an organization. Let’s delve into what update rings are, why they are important, and how you can benefit from adopting a similar system for your organization.
What are update rings?
Update rings is a foundational IT strategy designed to simplify and improve update and patch management efficiency. While the term is most commonly associated with Microsoft Intune (Windows Update Rings), the concept is broadly applied across virtually all major technology platforms for effective endpoint management.
When combined with a comprehensive UEM solution capable of automated, scheduled updates, this process creates a successful update-cycle deployment with minimal human intervention. Such a structured approach to update deployment allows organizations to test updates in controlled environments before wider rollout. This significantly reduces the risk of operational disruptions caused by problematic patches while maintaining security compliance.
How update rings work
At its core, an update ring is a rollout strategy where IT admins can determine the phases for each update per device group. Instead of deploying software, operating systems, or security patches to every device at once, IT admins divide devices into sequenced groups, which become the rings.
This creates a structure that enables testing and validating updates to see if they work as intended before rolling them out across every endpoint in their networks. Through it, IT teams can detect and exclude problematic updates early that may cause application incompatibilities, performance degradation, or system crashes.
Structuring your update rings
The idea is to start by segregating all the endpoints within the organization into four target groups, which will be the rings. Each ring represents a distinct validation phase with specific endpoints, monitoring criteria, and success metrics that must be met before progressing to the next deployment stage. Let’s look at each ring with a lens:
Ring 1: Test lab
This ring acts as a lab environment to verify that the current set of updates or patches is working without causing any issues. It is composed of a small group of endpoints where IT admins can thoroughly test the updates in a controlled environment before they are released to a broader audience.
Ring 2: Pilot group
The updates are rolled out to a new yet small set of endpoints that are currently being used by the workforce for further validation regarding their success rates. These early adopters help further test the updates in a more diverse but still controlled environment.
Ring 3: Targeted groups
Once the updates have passed the pilot ring testing, they can now be deployed to a larger group of users. This group consists of a general user base that stands at a higher priority than the rest of the organizations, needing the updates and patches for mission-critical applications.
Ring 4: Full deployment
Once an update has passed through the first three rings, it can now be deployed to the entire organization. By this stage, the updates should be stable, and any significant issues should have been resolved.
Custom ring structure
By using an advanced UEM solution capable of automated and scheduled updates, organizations can customize their ring structures to adapt to specific needs and IT environments. By implementing deployment segments and criteria beyond percentage-based groupings, it offers the flexibility to create custom groups for targeted deployment phases based on department functions, risk profiles, or system criticality.
This allows for the strategy to be universally applicable. Small organizations can create a smaller structure comprising only three rings, while large enterprises can add additional rings for critical infrastructure and remote devices. This builds a simplified structure ensuring robust protection and adapting to the intricate infrastructures or specialized compliance needs, and creates a balance between operational efficiency and risk mitigation.
Benefits of update rings
Having staged update and patch deployment through update rings provides several benefits, such as:
1. Reduced risk
Having staged update rollouts allows IT admins to identify and resolve issues before they affect the entire organization and minimizes the risk of widespread disruptions.
2. Improved stability
By identifying and remediating potential issues early on, IT admins ensure the overall stability of the IT environment, preventing unexpected downtimes and performance issues.
3. Timely deployments
By setting up scheduled updates for endpoints across all rings, IT admins can ensure that the right group receives updates promptly and bug-free, significantly reducing downtime.
4. Compliance
By creating a testing lab for Ring 1, IT admins can verify that all updates align with organizational policies and industry standards. This helps avoid compliance violations, which can lead to fines, legal issues, or damage to the organization’s reputation.
Plan your updates smartly
Creating an update ring strategy leads to more stable and secure updates and patch management across all endpoints within the organization. It reduces the IT workload of addressing individual issues for scattered endpoints and helps create a consistent cycle of updates and patches.
Scalefusion allows IT teams to set custom policies for automated and scheduled updates, meaning your endpoints remain up-to-date with the latest updates at all times. Push, defer, and configure OS updates and patches, and obtain detailed reports, all from a unified dashboard.
