Health Monitoring in WSUS 3.0

WSUS monitors the health of the WSUS server and its components by means of a service that runs at frequent intervals and logs the results as events in the event log. You can look at the events with the Event Viewer, and you can get more information by downloading the WSUS 3.0 MOM Pack.

Health checks

The WSUS health monitoring service automatically checks the health of WSUS components as long as WSUS server components are installed on the computer. (The service does not run on computers where only the console or only the database is installed.) The health check service has two cycles: detect and refresh. In the detect cycle, only changes are logged (for example, a service was running but has stopped). In the refresh cycle, all errors and warnings are logged. By default the detect cycle polls WSUS components every ten minutes and the refresh cycle polls every six hours, but if you wish to run the health check at other times (for example, to verify a configuration change to WSUS or to configure the service to run more or less often), you can use the wsusutil utility. For instructions on running the utility, see Managing WSUS 3.0 from the Command Line under the "healthmonitoring" section.

Polling WSUS components

The following WSUS components are checked for potential problems:

  • Core: issues with disk space, permissions, e-mail notifications, and catalog and content synchronization
  • Database: issues with connectivity and availability
  • Web Services: issues with permissions and Web service health
  • Clients: issues with clients not reporting, client self-update, the update agent, client inventory, and clients' ability to install updates

Viewing event logs

The events generated by the health monitoring service are logged in the Application event log.

To view WSUS events

  1. Start the Event Viewer (click Start, click Run, and then type eventvwr).

  2. In the left pane, click Application.

  3. Find the events whose source is Windows Server Update Services.

WSUS logs error, warning, and informational events. Errors are problems that should be fixed immediately (for example, that available local storage has dropped below a certain level), warnings are notifications of situations that are tending to become problems (for example, that WSUSService has stopped, or that synchronization has not taken place in the last 24 hours), and informational events are notifications of situations that are probably not problems (for example, that a service has stopped or started).

Resolving problems

In many cases the solution to an error or warning event will be obvious. For example, if disk space is low, you would remove unneeded files. In other cases, you might need to do more investigation before deciding on the right solution. You could read the troubleshooting sections of this document, or search online for similar issues. If you are using the Microsoft Operations Manager, you can also download the WSUS 3.0 (MOM) Pack.

WSUS 3.0 Server Administration Issues

WSUS 3.0 Client Computer Administration Issues