Windows Updates

[nawbus]

Our School has just bought 4 new laptops for some of the teachers. As part of setting them up, I'm running all the Windows updates. As there are 31 critical updates to install, just downloading and installing takes nearly 2 hours!

Last year, MS released a Windows Security Update CD which included all the updates up to that point.

Does anyone know if there is a post SP2 version? Or has some enterprising person collated a CD of all the updates?

[Geoff]

can you not use a WSUS server?

[Dos_Box]

Agreed. A WSUS server, even working on a virtual machine for a primary school would be ideal. Now there's an idea!!

[nawbus]

Interesting. I must admit that in my ignorance I'd not heard of a WSUS server before.

Are there any issues I should know about installing on an RM Windows 2000 server?

[Geoff]

You need to install some extra components and patches to get it running on a W2k server. You also need to add a GPO to tell the clients where to look for updates and what to do when they update.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/technologies/featured/wsus/default.mspx

[ajbritton]

@Dos_Box: I like that idea. WSUS on a virtual machine. Presumably you could use the VMWare player to run it on...

[Dos_Box]

Interesting. I must admit that in my ignorance I'd not heard of a WSUS server before.

Are there any issues I should know about installing on an RM Windows 2000 server?

 

RM!!? You have my deepest sympathy.

[Geoff]

Yes, I was thinking that.

[nawbus]

RM!!? You have my deepest sympathy.

 

We have to live with what we are given!

[Dos_Box]

@Dos_Box: I like that idea. WSUS on a virtual machine. Presumably you could use the VMWare player to run it on...

 

I'd been thinking about it yesterday. Smaller schools could just buy a decent spec PC forf around £500, use VM ware or M$ Virtual PC and run whatever services they need, or if they ahve a technician visit once a week then they can do the relevant updates to 3 or 4 servers running on one box. It's certainly a very viable propostion for primarys to get server services without the expense.

[sahmeepee]

We run it on a virtual machine (virtual PC). WS2003 hosted on WS2003. It works fine and looks after about 500 clients although the interface to WSUS is a fair bit slower than SUS was.

[Geoff]

Yes, I find the WSUS Admin pages take a little while to load sometimes. But on the whole I end up looking at the WSUS admin stuff less often so its not a big deal.