Introduction

Effectively managing your WSUSenvironment is critical to maintaining a healthy and secure Windows infrastructure. This chapterhighlights the two management models available to Windows Software Update Services (WSUS)administrators and the concepts and tasks involved with managing updates and computers. Thischapter also discusses the reporting capabilities added to WSUS and the technique for generatingstatus reports for the product updates and computers managed in your WSUS environment.

Centralized vs. Distributed Environments

WSUS deployments are supported in both centralized and distributed environments. Eachmanagement model enables you to manage the distribution of updates throughout your organization.The model you choose depends on a variety of factors, including available administrative resources,connectivity, and Active Directory design. You should also consider your organization s culturaland political climate when choosing between the two models. In some cases, it may make more senseto centralize WSUS management; under other conditions, WSUS management should be distributed acrossdifferent groups of administrators. Furthermore, you are not obliged to commit to only onemanagement model for the entire organization. You can choose to have a centrally managed WSUSenvironment serving updates to some computers, and one or more autonomous WSUS deployments servingothers.

The following sections discuss the differences between the two management models as well asdesign considerations.