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WSUS or SMS for updates?

C

Cooky

Golden Member
Could anyone please tell me if they'd recommend SMS for Windows security updates over WSUS??

WSUS seems easier to manage but SMS can offer more options (can manage more than just Windows updates). I'd like to know what people are using and what they think about these two products.

Thanks.
 
WSUS seems easier to manage but SMS can offer more options (can manage more than just Windows updates).
Click to expand...

Well you seem a little conflicted 🙂 Do you just need to deploy security updates, or do you want to do more? If you just need to deploy updates for Windows, Office, etc, WSUS is easy to setup and manage and it is free.

If you want to do the above plus deploy software, keep software and hardware inventory, etc, SMS is the way to go.
 
WSUS is free, SMS is not. WSUS is easier to mange for updates.

So, use WSUS for updates. If you need to distribute software later, get SMS, but keep using WSUS for updates.
 
We already have WSUS in place, though not working well. I think that's because there's some sort of conflict between the SQL desktop engines between the one for WSUS and WhatsUp Pro.

Regardless, we need a solution for Windows updates for now, and possibly use it to distribute other software in the future.

We're a Microsoft partner so we've got SMS for free (well, sort of) so cost is not an issue here but the functionality and ease of management are.
 
We're a Microsoft partner so we've got SMS for free (well, sort of) so cost is not an issue here but the functionality and ease of management are.
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There is a substantial learning curve to SMS compared to WSUS. So unless you are already familiar with SMS, you will need to be prepared to expend time and resources on getting up to speed.
 
Originally posted by: Cooky
We already have WSUS in place, though not working well. I think that's because there's some sort of conflict between the SQL desktop engines between the one for WSUS and WhatsUp Pro.
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Is it possible to move either WSUS or WhatsUp Pro to another server?
 
There are alternative to SMS. I checked out several asset management/sw and patch management solutions. SMS had a big learning curve. Centennial Data was easy, and had some cool stuff, but their SNMP stuff was not my favorite, Altiris has one, but I didn't like the clunky, slow web UI for it, (does have a free trial though), Couple of others I can't remember, Landesk, Scalable Software, etc.
 
My experiences is SMS in large environments doenst seem to scale terribly well. At my previous job we had about 650 computers on our campus with an SMS server on site that was configured to grab updates, patches, and applications push's from corporate where they pushed to nearly 60,000 computers.

About every second month we would get a list of clients, about 100-150 deep where SMS wasnt working.

But in a 80-100 enviornment it I bet it will be fine.

 
My experiences is SMS in large environments doenst seem to scale terribly well.
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What version? SMS 2003 scales extremely well. One of my colleagues has a customer with over 3000 SMS sites with ~200,000 machines, and there ae no issues with scaling. You can also go in the other direction, since SMS 2003 supports workgroups.
 
Originally posted by: STaSh
My experiences is SMS in large environments doenst seem to scale terribly well.
Click to expand...

What version? SMS 2003 scales extremely well. One of my colleagues has a customer with over 3000 SMS sites with ~200,000 machines, and there ae no issues with scaling. You can also go in the other direction, since SMS 2003 supports workgroups.
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Good point, believe we were using 2000 but starting to roll out 03 before I left.

 
I know the learning curve for SMS is big but didn't realize it was too much for me...
I've been reading some documents from TechNet and still can't get anything done...I need a step-by-step guide to set up SMS in shortest time possible. That's all I need.

All the books and websites I've found require at least a month's worth of reading. Anyone know a quick setup guide for SMS??
 
In terms of windows security updates the only reason SMS is better than WSUS is in its ability to update windows nt 3.x & 4. WSUS is by far the superior product at this role unless you arn't running AD, are running a NT4 domain, have NT4/98/95 systems in use, or like driving nails into your head. Yes WSUS has less options but it is unlikely that you will need any of them. I run both. SMS for software deployment and WSUS for windows updates.
 
All the books and websites I've found require at least a month's worth of reading. Anyone know a quick setup guide for SMS??
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SMS is not the type of thing you want to rush into production without a thorough understanding of how the product works. Especially when you consider that SMS can quickly cause undesired effects on your entire network if you aren't careful.
 
WSUS is far easier at pushing updates to your clients. We have both systems in place and we use SMS primarily for remote admin of clients, to push custom software, and to run reports on how our systems are being used by our users (IE inventory of software installed, etc). To get the full benefit from having SMS in place you need to have someone on hand who is pretty good at SQL query language (The queries that SMS runs are very similar).

The long and the short of it is I would not suggest SMS unless you are ready to devote a lot of time to setting it up correctly. You can have WSUS up in a few hours where as SMS may take you a few hours to write one query or one software push. If you have specific WSUS questions I would suggest posting in the mircosoft news groups for help. You can also PM me and I'll try and help you out if it is something I have ran into before.
 
Thanks for everyone's feedback.
I realize that SMS is a complex system and requires careful planning and a lot of time. I just told my manager that we should keep using WSUS for Windows updates until we get SMS implemented. I just put in a purchase request for this book I'll be reading a lot of other documents too. What sucks is now I won't have time for other projects but this one.

A lot of times when it takes you a long time to get something done, people who have no clue would think you're incompetent, which is why I asked for a "quick setup guide" just in case it happens to me.

In a previous job it would take me twice as long to set up a new Windows PC because I put in all the service packs and updates for both Windows and Office while my co-workers didn't. And my boss (and some clients) thought I was not capable of doing anything because of that...
 
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