What Is the TLP Tool?

TLP is a command-line interface (CLI) tool that enables you to centralize patch set creation on multiple systems in large data centers. The TLP tool enables you to plan patch deployment cycles that fit into your change management policies. The tool also has an HTML interface that provides an overview of the patch status of all your systems. The TLP tool was designed to assist you in performing many of the complex and time-consuming tasks that exist in large data centers. The main focus of TLP is patch set creation for Solaris systems. TLP uses external analyzers to analyze each system. The analyzer tool selects the patches to include in a given patch set, based on the system information that is gathered.

The TLP tool's functionality differs from the Patch Manager software. With Patch Manager, the tasks of patch analysis, the downloading of patches, patch set creation, and patch installation all take place on the target system. With the TLP tool, patch analysis, the downloading of patches, and patch set creation are performed on the server. Patch installation is a separate task that you perform by using scripts that are provided by the TLP tool.

The TLP tool does not install patch sets. Patch set installation is a separate task that you perform after the tool automatically generates the patch sets for your systems.