Skip to content

Archive · 2006 · March

SUS to WSUS Migration

IT-Software

Yesterday, I have just installed the new WSUS (stands for Windows Server Update Services). I had a problem when migrating the old SUS server content to the new WSUS server. The documentation says that I should:

  1. Share the remote content on SUS (simply by sharing the SUS folder in the SUS server and ensure the permission is to read content for Everyone).
  2. Execute wsusutil.exe utility in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Windows Server Update Services\Tools with the syntax:
    wsusutil.exe migratesus /content *LocationOfRemoteSUSContent* /approvals *SUSServerName* "*WSUSTargetGroupName*" /log *filename*

Seems very simple, uh?? I decided to import the content first, then the approvals later; so I skipped the /approval SUSServerName “WSUSTargetGroupName” parameter. But I still had a problem after doing those steps. After executing wsusutil.exe, WSUS still shows the number of updates is zero. Luckily I found some simple method as follows:

  1. Import the SUS content (using wsusutil.exe migratesus /content LocationOfRemoteSUSContent /log filename)
  2. Set the WSUS server not to store updates locally, but download from Microsoft updates (from Advanced Synchronization options)
  3. Synchronize the WSUS server
  4. Import the SUS approval using wsusutil.exe migratesus /approvals SUSServerName “WSUSTargetGroupName” /log filename
  5. Change the Advanced Synchronization options to store the updates locally (please review other settings as well, since it may be resetted)
  6. Resynchronize the WSUS server for checking (don’t worry when you see “Updates needing files” status shows so many updates need to be downloaded; after some time, it will show “0”)

The step #2 and #3 are required to minimize the synchronization time and bandwidth since WSUS server will download the metadata only. Of course we need to do step #5 to configure WSUS server to store the updates locally (after all, it is one of our aims in implementing SUS/WSUS, isn’t it??).

Hopefully this document is useful for you who wants to migrate from SUS to WSUS. Happy WSUS-ing 🙂