Software Update Services Deployment White Paper

Summary

This white paper describes the deployment of Microsoft Software Update Services, a new tool for managing and distributing critical Windows patches that resolve known security vulnerabilities and other stability issues in Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server™ 2003 operating systems.

Software Update Services leverages the successful Windows Automatic Updates service first available in Windows XP, and allows information technology professionals to configure a server that contains content from the live Windows Update site in their own Windows-based intranets to service corporate servers and clients.

The purpose of this white paper is to help plan and deploy the Software Update Services solution. Readers are walked through all necessary installation and configuration steps required to deploy both a server running Software Update Services and the Automatic Updates client.

The target audience of this document is the IT administrator that is planning, evaluating, or deploying the Software Update Services software in order to automatically and securely keep Windows computers in their network up-to-date with security patches and other critical updates.

Included in This Document

• Introduction
• Software Update Services Solution Features
• Getting Started with Software Update Services
• Software Update Services Common Administration Tasks
• Testing Content for Software Update Services Deployment
• Planning a Software Update Services Deployment
• Server Backup and Disaster Recovery
• Getting Started with Automatic Updates
• Deploying the Automatic Updates Client
• Configuring the Automatic Updates client software
• Troubleshooting
• Appendix A: Understanding Software Update Services Setup
• Appendix B: Software Update Services Event Log Messages
• Appendix C: Client Status Logging
• Related Links