Unsolved WSUS Product Selection

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I work for a small NPO where budget is tight. The ability to control updates is something I need. WSUS was an attractive option as I already run a Windows Server environment.

I watched the courses from the MCSA 2012 R2 about WSUS, and it looks straight forward enough. However, i have a few questions that I couldn't readily find through Google.

1. If my WSUS server is not downloading updates for a product, are my users still able to receive updates for those? IE: If I only wanted to control Windows and Office updates, but leave driver updates alone... Do my users simply download driver updates from MS update, and OS/Office updates from my on-site WSUS server? Or, do they not have access to driver updates at all since my on-site WSUS server does not have those products' update information?

2. Aside from the base OS products (IE: "Windows 7" as it appears in the product selection list), are there any others that I should include? (IE: "Windows 7 Dynamic Update," "Windows 8.1 or later drivers," etc.)

3. If I wanted to store my updates on a different server than the one WSUS is hosted on, what sort of share and file permissions need to be set on that share? Or, better question... is this even a good idea?

Thanks for the great work.

Great questions Brian! Glad you are enjoying the shows!

1. No. When you configure a client to use WSUS, you are modifying the registry entry for where to look for updates. So WSUS clients will only connect to your WSUS server for updates. Normally, this is what we want, so they cannot download untested/unapproved updates. If they are a local admin on the machine, they can change their update settings to go to Microsoft Update instead of WSUS, but not both. So you will need to choose to synchronize all updates you want to push out.

2. Because of the answer to the first question, you will need to select all products/categories that you need to support on your network.

3. WSUS does not support storing updates on a network share or mapped drive. If your drive is low on space, you can add a larger drive and change the storage location. You could also use an iSCSI drive or SAN, as these would appear as local storage to the server. Is this a good idea? I don't think it matters, as far as WSUS is concerned. You would want to monitor performance and make sure that was satisfactory. Might be easier to add space in the future as well.

Hope this helps,
Mike

Good to know.

In regards to selecting products... are there any not-so-obvious ones that I should select? "Windows 7" for example is a pretty obvious one I'd want to select. However, are any of the WIndows 7 derivatives such as language packs, dynamic updates, etc. worth installing? There's not a lot of info out there that I could find on which updates do what.

Also, about the network share... During the initial install for WSUS, it asks where to store the WID database. It states in the dialogue box that a network UNC path can be entered. If WSUS updates can't be placed on a network share... what is this functionality used for?