WSUS Opinion ?

knowlesy

knowlesy

knowlesy

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Right Im contemplating installing wsus onto a small company of 30 server well call it "CompanyA", as they only have a pathetic internet connection, and well it would hopefully lighten the load on it, but I have heard very little about wsus and what I have heard is it can be demanding on the server (that was ages ago and I haven't read much user opinion on it other than stated) So I want your opinion on it and which version as Im reading its just gone to 3.0. I just want to know whether its really worth it although even if its not (Id really still like to unless it will hammer the server Im running pfmon to check server usage atm) and size usage and ease of use etc ....

they have 20gig spare currently on one of the hdds and I imagine it wont go past 4 or 5 gig ?

CompanyA has got a 2003 r2 server
2.6 xeon
2 gig of ye old ram


so any help with this would be much appreciated ocuk'ers
 
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it does the job when its set up right, but the HDD space will probably need more than you have available, depending on which updates you use it for
 
i was thinking more critical updates service packs etc... they are mainly xp machines with 2 vista ... would it be possible to set it up just for service packs and critical updates to the wsus server and the internet for drivers and optional but force them to update it regardless (I assume that will be a group policy) but can it handle it
 
You can set SUS to only download critical updates but I dont think theres any way to get the workstations to update everything else directly - cant see why you would want to do that
 
20gb might be a little tight in all honesty, just stick with critical + service packs, thats what I do and it seems to work fine!
 
Im always amazed at how quickly the HDD space goes on a WSUS server.

It's fairly easy to set up and configure though.

It depends how poor their internet connection is and if they feel the pinch on a Wednesday when we normally get all the updates released. If they do feel the bandwidth at that time then a WSUS server will probably help, if it's always poor then updates wont make a huge impact.
 
J.B said:
Im always amazed at how quickly the HDD space goes on a WSUS server.
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Indeed. Oh and DON'T select driver updates. Not only will it take up loads of disk space but it'll also dump a load of records in the SQL DB which means queries take so much longer.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
Indeed. Oh and DON'T select driver updates. Not only will it take up loads of disk space but it'll also dump a load of records in the SQL DB which means queries take so much longer.
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thats what i was wanting the machines themselves to download direcctly from the internet rarther than overload the wsus .... is it possible or is that a nice ickle pipe dream #? ?
 
Sp00n said:
20gb might be a little tight in all honesty, just stick with critical + service packs, thats what I do and it seems to work fine!
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I agree, if you stick to the essentials of critical updates for the minimum number of products, you'll probably be okay. I have a WSUS server at home, I selected XP, Vista, 2008, 7, Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Office 2003, Office 2007 and a few other bits and my WsusContent folder is 29GB, so you will have to be very careful in making your selections.

One of the best thing is, it allows you to see if updates have failed on any of your machines, so you can deal with it before it becomes an issue. It's also really handy for when you need to reimage a computer, as the updates take only a minute or two to download, instead of hours on a slow internet connection. Well worth doing if you can!
 
knowlesy said:
thats what i was wanting the machines themselves to download direcctly from the internet rarther than overload the wsus .... is it possible or is that a nice ickle pipe dream #? ?
Click to expand...

WSUS uses group policy. The policy/ies determine where the clients look for updates. Either it is the WSUS server OR not. Unfortunately you cannot determine where the client looks for classes of updates (although that would be a cool feature)

Only way of doing it for drivers would be to manuall visit windows update (XP) or tell Windows Update in Vista to check online (if the admin hasn't turned it off completely using Group Policy). It's not a good way of doing it though for lots of machines.

I'd also echo the disk space requirements. I'm at about 29GB too with Office 2003/2007, Vista, 7, XP, 2003, 2008, ISA 2004, Exchange 2003 etc

ck
 
oh i know but it was a for instance I ment, eg optional such as media player and terminal services 6.0 :)


thanks guys Ill keep it to the minimum
 
Even a USB hard drive would do the job. WSUS is not a critical daily routine, let it push out overnight and it should not really matter.

Ok, It will not be stellar performance, but it should push out you're updates.
 
There are some obscure products for which WSUS can provide updates for; Zune, for example. I wonder how big the store would be if you selected all of the products and classifications... any volunteers? :)
 
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