I had a mail about an update to the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool , which I thought was worth passing on: in case you haven’t come across it before :

The Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 2.1 manages the workflow of updating large numbers of offline virtual machines according to their individual needs. To do this, the tool works with Microsoft® System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 or 2008 R2 and with either Windows Server Update Services (3.0 SP1 or SP2 ) or System Center Configuration Manager (2007 SP1 or SP2 or 2007-R2.)

It uses “servicing jobs” to manage the update operations based on lists of existing virtual machines stored in VMM. For each virtual machine, the servicing job:

• * “Wakes” the virtual machine (deploys it to a host and starts it).
• * Triggers the appropriate software update cycle (Configuration Manager or WSUS).
• * Shuts down the updated virtual machine and returns it to the library.
• Using a maintenance host with carefully controlled connectivity you can reduce the risk to a VM while it is in the process of being patched

We’ve just released a new version of the tool to fully support the latest releases of WSUS, SCCM, SCVMM, and Hyper-V and Windows, which you can download – complete with additional information, here

If all your VMs are running all the time, this will not be of all that much interest to you – but if you have complex environment with a library of VMs which see occasional use, then this is something which you really should take a look at.