Manage updates

This objective deals with the various methods you can use for managing software updates for your organization’s private cloud deployment. The most basic method of managing software updates is to use Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). In a Microsoft private cloud environment, you are likely to use both Configuration Manager and VMM, both integrated with WSUS, to manage updates. You use VMM to manage updates for the servers involved in the virtualization infrastructure, and Configuration Manager to manage the updates for the virtual machines running within the private cloud.

This section covers the following topics:

 Managing updates with WSUS

 Managing updates with Configuration Manager

 Integrating WSUS with VMM

 Updating offline VMs

Summary

• WSUS is a Windows Server server role that allows you to manage and centralize the deployment of updates.
• You can configure automatic approval rules that allow updates to be automatically approved based on update classification, product being updated, and the computers being updated.
• You can integrate WSUS with Configuration Manager. When you do this, you create software update groups that contain multiple updates and then deploy these updates to Configuration Manager computer collections.
• You can perform compliance checks to determine whether updates have been deployed on specific Configuration Manager clients.
• You can integrate WSUS with VMM. This allows you to manage the updates for your virtualization hosts as well as your VMM infrastructure.
• With VMM, you collect updates into baselines. You can then assess hosts against the baseline and remediate any hosts that are missing updates.