WSUS as a VM

[MrWu]

Hi all,

Just about to build a VM of WSUS on Hyper-V r2 and wondering what your opinions are:

I normally use a fixed size VHD for say SQL applications and a seperate OS VHD, but what would you do for a WSUS as a VM for serving around 500 PCs?

Would you stick the whole lot OS and all, into a standard dynamically expanding disk upto 127gb, up seperate them out?

It will be running win 2008 r2 x64.

Cheers all.

[jamesfed]

Personaly I wouldn't ever use dynamically expanding VHDs for anything production related (I think its best pratice as well to only used dynamic for testing purposes only).
For drive capacity even a well stocked WSUS database+update store won't chew through that many GB anyway.

[AngryTechnician]

It's always good practice to separate your OS install from the data part of the server. If the OS is on a separate disk/partition, you run much less risk of the server being crippled if the data store unexpectedly fills the allocated space.

Definitely fixed size for the OS, though I think you could get away with dynamically expanding for the WSUS data store. I would only do it if you are pushed for space on the host though, and even then you will need to be careful about it not expanding too large.

[salan]

I used to use fixed size vhd's, but I read (somewhere on the VMWare site) that the concensus now is that thin disks (variable)are actually better now.
Could be wrong, but to be honest I have not noticed and real performance dif.
Alan

[sted]

if its only wsus dont see the need for a 2nd data drive whats the worst that can happen if it dies you lose updates for a day or so while you rebuild?

[gshaw]

Using thin disks for it on VMWare - works fine

Not sure how clever VHDs are compared to VMDKs when used thin though...

[AngryTechnician]

if its only wsus dont see the need for a 2nd data drive whats the worst that can happen if it dies you lose updates for a day or so while you rebuild?

Why waste that time? Having a second disk isn't exactly onerous.

Also the rebuild time will depend on how complicated your WSUS structure is. I have 20+ computer groups set up and all our software installs done through WSUS using Local Update Publisher, so I would haver to recreate all of those too (along with the correct approvals).