Windows Server Updates Services (WSUS) provides a solution for businesses that need to deploy updates on the network. It provides administrators with a finer granularity of control when it comes to installing updates on servers and workstations throughout the network.

In this series of articles, I will outline the steps you need to complete in order to install and configure Windows Server Update Services on a computer running Microsoft Windows Server 2003. This article assumes you are familiar with Windows Update and Automatic Updates.

Windows Server Update Services
There are many benefits to using WSUS for deploying updates. One such benefit is that it gives administrators an opportunity to download updates to a specific server on the network and use them within a test environment before approving them for installation in the production environment. If you have ever installed updates, you are probably aware that installing them does not always produce positive results. So this gives administrators a chance to install the update before they are installed on production servers and workstations.

There are two different components to a software update infrastructure that uses WSUS. You have at least one server on the network running WSUS and you have your automatic update clients as outlined below.

• Windows Server Update Services 3.0 server - This component is installed on a computer running Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1. Whenever updates are available on the Windows Update Site, the WSUS server can automatically download them (or they can be downloaded manually by an administrator). The updates can then be tested, published for users, and installed on workstations configured to use WSUS.
• Automatic Update Clients - This component is installed on all servers and workstations running Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, and Windows XP so they can connect to the server on the internal network running WSUS.

[tags]windows server, update services, microsoft[/tags]