Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) can use a lot of resources, so why not use Windows Server Core and make the most of the resources you have. In this post I’ll go through the initial steps on how to deploy and configure a WSUS server using command line and PowerShell. This guide is also suitable for regular GUI Windows Server installations. Installing Windows Server Core Boot the server from the Windows Server media and on the “Select the Operating System you want to install” screen, select the option “Windows Server Standard” or “Datacenter” edition.

I’ve been revisiting my MDT process as I wanted to try and use Windows Update to get drivers during deployment - by itself this is not a problem, I can just remove the WSUSServer=http://wsus:8530 configuration from the CustomSettings.ini. However as the device is added to the domain, Group Policy will configure the device to use the local WSUS for updates, this is desired as I still want to use WSUS for future updates, but I want to use Windows Update during deployment.

Windows Server Update Services, along with a growing list of other traditional Microsoft server products, seems to be in ‘maintenance mode’ at best. It’s been on my mind as to whether they’re going to release a cloud based version in Azure (unless they already have something like that and I’ve missed it) or if they’re going the route that I think they are: just update from the internet and don’t worry about it, which seems to be the answer when looking at Windows Autopilot.

As Windows is now delivered ‘as-a-service’ with major updates being released biannually, you may want to push out these major updates using WSUS. In previous posts I’ve covered deploying Windows 10 1703 (Creators Update) as a clean install with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and also how to perform an upgrade to Windows 10 1703 using MDT. In this post, I’ll walk through the process of pushing out the upgrade to Windows 10 1703 using WSUS.

Update 2018-04-20: I’ve rolled the information in this post and updated it, into a new post about setting up a WSUS server from scratch on Windows Server 2016 Core. The post is also suitable for a regular Windows Server 2016 server with a GUI. You can read it here. I’ve been dealing with some issues with a WSUS server recently. It services around 1000 devices, mostly Windows 10 with some Windows 7, Windows Server 2016/2012 R2/2012 and 2008 R2.

If you’ve installed a fresh install of Windows 10 1607/Windows Server 2016 recently, you may have experienced a problem when it tries to download and install updates from your local WSUS server - specifically, it doesn’t, it gets stuck. You’ve tired rebooting, stopping the BITS and WU services, deleting %systemroot%\SoftwareDistribution but nothing seems to work. Both Windows 10 1607 and Windows Server 2016 require a cumulative update that fixes this specific issue.

Update 2018-04-20 I’ve rolled the information in this post, and updated it, into a new post about setting up a WSUS server from scratch on Windows Server 2016 Core. The post is also suitable for a regular Windows Server 2016 server with a GUI. You can read it here. Update I’ve tested and updated this post for Windows Server 2016. In this post, I’m going to walk through setting up a WSUS server from scratch on Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2016.

Update 2018-04-20: I’ve rolled the information in this post, and updated it, into a new post about setting up a WSUS server from scratch on Windows Server 2016 Core. The post is also suitable for a regular Windows Server 2016 server with a GUI. You can read it here. Update 2017-05-03: If you’re looking to resolve similar problems with WSUS on Windows Server 2016, please see this post. If you’ve been managing a WSUS server, you may have run into the well known MMC connection error above (appears as Event ID 7053 in the Event Viewer) by now.