Assessing WSUS Infrastructure

Most networks with Windows Server 2003 deployed have a couple of WSUS servers deployed. Prior to migrating to Server 2012 R2, you should evaluate your WSUS infrastructure and decide how to transition WSUS so that it is hosted on the new operating system.

For those that are a bit forgetful, WSUS is Windows Server Update Services. What it does is host a local repository of software updates. It allows local administrators to control which updates are deployed to WSUS clients, rather than just relying on the default approvals that occur when Microsoft releases an update. Most organizations use WSUS (or something similar) so that they can choose when to approve updates.

When assessing your organization’s WSUS infrastructure, you need to check the following things:

You should also try to figure out how many WSUS servers your organization needs. A key fact to remember about WSUS is that if you turn on BITS, each WSUS server can theoretically support up to 25,000 clients.

In the next article, we'll talk about how you actually migrate a WSUS server.