Microsoft Software Update Services Listing updated: April 22, 2003

Microsoft Software Update Services (SUS) is designed to greatly simplify the process of keeping Windows-based systems up-to-date with the latest critical updates. SUS enables administrators to quickly and reliably deploy critical updates to their Windows 2000-based servers and Windows 2003-based servers as well as desktop computers running Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Professional.

Company: Microsoft Corporation
URL: www.microsoft.com
Email: info@microsoft.com

Users' Rating: 3.2 [70 votes] - Vote

Comments

January 13, 2004 - SUS Review by Steve C, Product Rating: 3/5: I have been using SUS to deploy windows critical patches and Service Packs to over 18,000 systems over the past 5 months. Using Active Directory GPO's to configure our client systems, one SUS server is able to handle all of our client systems.

SUS does not have a reporting system and once the patch is approved on the server, it is up to the client systems to pull that patch and install it. Clients can fail to install the patch for many different reasons but 95% of the clients appear to get patched successfully (no formal reporting to ensure successful patching). One advantage to SUS is that clients will get all relevant patches each time they poll the SUS server so any new systems that need multiple patches will get them within 24-48 hours.
This is a good product for helping to keep your systems patched but it lacks the full reporting and control capabilities to be acceptable as your primary patch management tool.