Learning to Fly - Mika's Blog

I've had a 16 (virtual) machine WSUS RC test lab up and running now for almost a week and it is running sweet :) This time I decided to use a workgroup scenario and WSUS's own computer group targeting. A bit more work than using AD & Group Policy but nice to see how well it works. Few comments:

• If you use virtual machines (and are running on a "memory-limited" host machine), make sure to reserve at least 384 MB of RAM for the WSUS server
• In order to speed things up initially in the clients i.e. to make the AU client to check up a specific SUS/WSUS server once, I used Software Update Services Utility instead of hacking the registry and restarting the Automatic Update service manually. The utility is a small command line tool with which you can force the AU client to call up a specific SUS/WSUS server within the next ten minutes instead of waiting for hours
• Computers will show up in the Computers section after they've made the first contact with the WSUS server. There is no "magic button" to add them there
• As stated in the WSUS Deployment Guide, "Microsoft Windows SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (WMSDE) ships with WSUS. It is available only if you install WSUS on a computer running Windows Server 2003. It is similar to the next option, SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE), but without limitations for database size or connections."
• Information on updates is first downloaded into the database. When a WSUS client reports that it needs an update, WSUS decides that on the next synchronization cycle, it'll download the update
• http://www.susserver.com/ has tons of info on SUS but especially the forum starts to heat up on WSUS as well

Overall, the system has been running really well. WSUS will certainly be a very welcome (and recommended) upgrade over SUS.