Software Update Services (SUS) on server

we're just in the process of reading up on Software Update Services (SUS) and the associated SUS server to go on one of our Win2k servers.

I was just interested if any other board members have got any experience of configuring/using SUS to automate windows updates to a network.

We're going to be using it on our win2k server to distibute critical updates from the MS site.


Cheers for any info!

 

Hi, Chris.

I started using SUS server at work some two months ago. I have some 120 office computers with Win98, and I am upgrading them to WinXP. I wanted to be sure I have the control over the critical updates issue, not to relly on my users, that most of them are on the edge of being computer-illiterates.
So I took a long breath and started playing with this thing. It took a while to get to all the dark corners, Microsoft's white paper doesn't tell everything, we had to manage some things for ourselves...
It works pretty well, we hadn't problems so far. The only issue is that the SysAdmin should download the updates to SUS and aprove them. Only then the stations that update from the SUS connect to it and update. That means it isn't automatic, if your SysAdmin goes to vacation, it's better to have someone else monitoring the business .
Every time a station is logged into it, it checks for the last time it was updated. If that amount of time is greater than the period you set for updates, it will go and check for new updates.
Another thing: the SUS comes with no tool of managing the statistics of which stations downloaded what and when, which updates succedeed and which don't and so on. There is a solution of installing SQL Server on it, and it gives all the details you want. I cannot give you details on this at the moment, because I'm only at the beginning of it.

I hope this will help you.
Good luck.

 

The following site will be very helpful to you:
http://www.susserver.com/

 

I'm using SUS in my lab at work to keep all of my Lab servers up to date. My biggest problem I've had up to using this product what patching these servers. I knew the patches were out there, but getting all of the servers patches was a major problem.
Since I've rolled this product out, I have done very little administrative work, and managed to keep all of my systems up to date.