How can I check that two servers have the same features and updates installed?

Question

I have two Windows Server 2008 servers, one for test environment and the other for development environment. I would like to make sure that they have exact features and updates installed, what is the easiest way to check that?

Answer 1

Powershell can grab this info and let you compare the 2 servers more easily than eyeballing installed Features and updates. Run these on each server:

1. On one of the servers, open a powershell prompt and type Import-Module servermanager
2. Then type Get-WindowsFeature to list the installed features.
3. To get the installed updates type gwmi Win32_QuickFixEngineering | sort HotFixID (so you can have both lists in the same KB order to compare. You can also run this command against a remote server by adding the -computer parameter: gwmi Win32_QuickFixEngineering -computer <computername>| sort HotFixID.

There are various other things you can do to format the output to make it look better, exclude certain columns, even have PS compare the results and tell YOU which server is missing updates/features, but since you only have 2 servers to compare, this will likely get you there without getting too involved.

Answer 2

Look under "Installed Programs" then "Show updates" and go side by side and compare, or print screen them and print it out to reference if they aren;t near eachother geographically. Here's a link to a program with really detailed information about the computers. This will help with everything you could want to know about a computer...

LINK: http://www.u4ik.us/public/WinAudit.exe

NOTE: The program takes a long time to scan everything because it is thorough (maybe 30 seconds).