Creating the Secure Managed Desktop: Using Group Policy, SoftGrid, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, and Other Management Tools

8.2. Understanding the Components of WSUS

WSUS is a vast improvement over its predecessor SUS in that much of the internal workings of its client scanning process have been automated. With SUS, administrators were required to manually kickoff scans of machines on a regular basis to validate their configuration and see which patches needed installation. With WSUS, that process is changed such that clients scan themselves on a regular basis—every 22 hours by default—and automatically report their findings to the WSUS server behind the scenes.

Take a look at the multiple-site WSUS configuration in Figure 8.1. We'll talk in a minute about the specific kinds of architectures that can be set up for a WSUS infrastructure. For now, you can see here ...