Enable Update Management from an Automation account

This article describes how you can use your Automation account to enable the Update Management feature for VMs in your environment, including machines or servers registered with Azure Arc-enabled servers. To enable Azure VMs at scale, you must enable an existing Azure VM using Update Management.

Prerequisites

• Azure subscription. If you don't have one yet, you can sign up for a Trial Subscription.
• Automation account to manage machines.
• An Azure virtual machine, or VM or server registered with Azure Arc-enabled servers. Non-Azure VMs or servers need to have the Log Analytics agent for Windows or Linux installed and reporting to the workspace linked to the Automation account where Update Management is enabled. We recommend installing the Log Analytics agent for Windows or Linux by first connecting your machine to Azure Arc-enabled servers, and then use Azure Policy to assign the Deploy Log Analytics agent to Linux or Windows Azure Arc machines built-in policy. Alternatively, if you plan to monitor the machines with Azure Monitor for VMs, instead use the Enable Azure Monitor for VMs initiative.

Sign in to Azure

Sign in to the Azure portal.

Enable Update Management

1. In your Automation account, select Update management under Update management.

2. Choose the Log Analytics workspace and Automation account and select Enable to enable Update Management. The setup takes up to 15 minutes to complete.

   

Enable Azure VMs

1. From your Automation account select Update management under Update management.

2. Select + Add Azure VMs and select one or more VMs from the list. Virtual machines that can't be enabled are grayed out and unable to be selected. Azure VMs can exist in any region no matter the location of your Automation account.

3. Select Enable to add the selected VMs to the computer group saved search for the feature.

   

Enable non-Azure VMs

For machines or servers hosted outside of Azure, including the ones registered with Azure Arc-enabled servers, perform the following steps to enable them with Update Management.

1. From your Automation account, select Update management under Update management.

2. Select Add non-Azure machine. This action opens a new browser window with instructions to install and configure the Log Analytics agent for Windows so that the machine can begin reporting to Update Management.

Enable machines in the workspace

Manually installed machines or machines already reporting to your workspace must to be added to Azure Automation for Update Management to be enabled.

1. From your Automation account, select Update management under Update management.

2. Select Manage machines. The Manage machines button might be grayed out if you previously chose the option Enable on all available and future machines

   

3. To enable Update Management for all available machines reporting to the workspace, select Enable on all available machines on the Manage Machines page. This action disables the control to add machines individually and adds all of the machines reporting to the workspace to the computer group saved search query MicrosoftDefaultComputerGroup. When selected, this action disables the Manage Machines option.

4. To enable the feature for all available machines and future machines, select Enable on all available and future machines. This option deletes the saved search and scope configuration from the workspace, and permits the feature to include all Azure and non-Azure machines that currently or in the future, report to the workspace. When selected, this action disables the Manage Machines option permanently, as there's no scope configuration available.

   Note

   Because this option deletes the saved search and scope configuration within Log Analytics, it's important to remove any deletion locks on the Log Analytics Workspace before you select this option. If you don't, the option will fail to remove the configurations and you must remove them manually.

5. If necessary, you can add the scope configuration back by re-adding the initial saved search query. For more information, see Limit Update Management deployment scope.

6. To enable the feature for one or more machines, select Enable on selected machines and select Add next to each machine. This task adds the selected machine names to the computer group saved search query for the feature.

Next steps

• To use Update Management for VMs, see Manage updates and patches for your VMs.

• When you no longer need to manage VMs or servers with Update Management, see remove VMs from Update Management.

• To troubleshoot general Update Management errors, see Troubleshoot Update Management issues.