Windows Small Business Server 2011 : Understanding the Update Process (part 2) - Monitoring WSUS Activity

5. Monitoring WSUS Activity

The only other task that administrators should perform on a regular basis when running WSUS in its default configuration is to monitor the WSUS activities to make sure that all servers and workstations are receiving the updates they should on a regular basis.

In the Windows SBS Console, the Network Essentials Summary pane on the Home page contains an Updates indicator, as shown in Figure 3, which displays the current overall status of WSUS operations. An OK status means that all the computers on the network have all the latest updates installed, while a Warning status means that there are updates yet to be installed on all or some of the network’s computers.

Figure 3. The Updates indicator in the Network Essentials Summary pane.

When you click the Go to updates link in the Network Essentials Summary pane or click the Security page and select the Updates tab, the display shown in Figure 4 appears. The main element on this page is a list of updates in the following four categories:

Figure 4. The Updates page in the Windows SBS Console.

When you select an update from any of these four lists, the pane below the list displays information about that specific update, as shown in Figure 5, plus a link to the Microsoft Knowledge Base article containing documentation for the update.

Figure 5. Update information, as displayed in the Windows SBS Console.

When you select an update from the list and click View the update deployment report in the Tasks pane, a Deployment Report window appears, as shown in Figure 6. This window provides the status of that update on each of the network’s computers.

Figure 6. An Update’s Deployment Report window.

Notice that the Updates page does not contain a list of the updates that all the computers on the network have installed successfully. The Windows SBS Console is more concerned with informing administrators of conditions that require their attention than providing complete documentation of background activities. However, it is possible to display the installed and missing updates for a specific computer by opening its Properties sheet from the Computers tab of the Network page and clicking Updates, as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7. The Updates page in a computer’s Properties sheet.