What's useful about Multiple Consoles?

Remote Access

The ability to install the console (GUI) component separately, and have it connect to Master Agents with TCP/IP, means that the Master Agent can be located on a computer room server (for example) while you run the console on a PC in your office. This means you have remote access to the Master-Agent.

Note: Stand-Alone Console's are installed by doing a custom install and deselecting the Master-Agent ("Patch Management" in UpdateEXPERT Premium), leaving just the Console and Agent-Installer (for possible Agent deployment). The install directory is  C:\Program Files\St. Bernard Software\UpdateEXPERT by default, and will contain UpdateEXPERT.exe, which is the Console GUI program.

Whenever a Console is installed, it is recommended that at some point, as your first task, you connect to a Master-Agent and update the database from the Console to ensure that the Console registers the latest database build number, and gets any product updates that may be available on the Master-Agent.

Shared Management

Another implication of separate Console installation is that the Master-Agent can be placed in a different domain or workgroup than the Console. It also means that patch management can be shared among several people with their own Consoles, or that a Console can be quickly deployed for a person assuming patch management duties.

Multiple consoles can connect to the same Master-Agent, or can connect to different Master-Agents, see:

"Does each admin have their own console view?" for more information.

There are some settings which ARE stored on the console. If you select "View | Options" from the menu, you should see everything that is specific to the console. There are even a couple of things like window layout and column widths that are also stored per-console.

Connectivity

The console has a Master Agent connection dialogue that allows the console user to switch which Master-Agent they are connected to (serial connectivity, UpdateEXPERT v6.x) or allows simultaneous connectivity to multiple Master-Agents (UpdateEXPERT Premium). This means I can connect to a Master-Agent that is setup to manage a specific network region for patch deployment, or I can connect to a Master-Agent on the other side of a slow link for improved patch deployment performance. This can be done serially, or simultaneously, depending on your UpdateEXPERT version.

In UpdateEXPERT Premium, you may connect to multiple Master-Agents simultaneously, see:

Unified Master Agents in UpdateEXPERT Premium 7.0

In prior versions of UpdateEXPERT (v6.x) you may switch among multiple Master-Agents that have been deployed, but you are connected to one Master-Agent at a time, i.e., you can connect serially, but not simultaneously.

NOTE: Each Master-Agent has its own Registry machine data (UpdateEXPERT v6.x) or SQL machine data (UpdateEXPERT Premium). When you connect to another Master Agent, the network view could be identical or quite different depending on where the other Master Agent resides and what its network view is in terms of enumeration.  If you get an unexpectedly very different view when starting a Console, check what Master-Agent you are connected to.

Console Only Installation

When you run "Setup", you can do a "Custom" install, and simply install the Console component only. In UpdateEXPERT Premium, this means excluding "Patch Management" and "Settings Management".  UpdateEXPERT v6.x works similarly but you exclude the Master-Agent component (simply a different name).