options to store wsuscontent

Hi all,

Here is my situation:
I have a server where my wsus is installed.
Ihave limited amount of disk space and not an option to put in a new or
second disk.
I have a file server and or a NAS which has plenty of disk space.
I learned that the content must be on a local drive.
So is there no option beside putting in a new hard drive in my wsus for me?

What are others doign?

Thanks!
Alexander

"Alexander Pfingstl" <> wrote in message
news:...

> I have limited amount of disk space and not an option to put in a new
> or second disk.

> So is there no option beside putting in a new hard drive in my wsus for
> me?

Does this machine have a USB port? Put an external USB drive on it. If the
machine doesn't have a USB port, and not enough disk space, and you cannot
add or upgrade the existing drive, then it's probably not an appropriate
machine to use for WSUS.

> What are others doign?

What the documentation requires -- installing WSUS on a machine with
sufficient disk resources to run the application.

As an alternative, you can configure the WSUS server to store =zero=
content, and have your clients download content directly from microsoft.com


--
Lawrence Garvin, M.S., MCITP:EA, MCDBA
Principal/CTO, Onsite Technology Solutions, Houston, Texas
Microsoft MVP - Software Distribution (2005-2009)

MS WSUS Website: http://www.microsoft.com/wsus
My MVP Profile: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/pro...awrence.Garvin

Lawrence Garvin [MVP] wrote:

> What the documentation requires -- installing WSUS on a machine with
> sufficient disk resources to run the application.

Lawrence, is there still an option to put the content on a dfs share if you
configure WSUS as a (single node) cluster? I remember you mentioning this a
year or two back.

> As an alternative, you can configure the WSUS server to store =zero=
> content, and have your clients download content directly from microsoft.com

Alexander: you could also use this configuration in combination with a caching
proxy server. Or you could set up a software iSCSI disk and point your WSUS
server at it.

All in all, though, it would probably be easier to run WSUS on a more suitable
server.

Harry.

"Harry Johnston [MVP]" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Lawrence Garvin [MVP] wrote:
>
>> What the documentation requires -- installing WSUS on a machine with
>> sufficient disk resources to run the application.
>
> Lawrence, is there still an option to put the content on a dfs share if
> you configure WSUS as a (single node) cluster?

The option to put the content on a DFS share is "supported" in a configured
NLB cluster. The Deployment Guide discusses the requirements necessary to
implement this.

Whether one conveniently forgets to configure the second node of the NLB
cluster and continues to use the DFS share with only one node, would seem to
work theoretically -- but I've never actually tested it. When I brought up
that 'workaround' to the WSUS team, back in Mar 2007, they refused to
comment on the idea. ;-)

>> As an alternative, you can configure the WSUS server to store =zero=
>> content, and have your clients download content directly from
>> microsoft.com
>
> Alexander: you could also use this configuration in combination with a
> caching proxy server.

A creative option, for certain! The caching proxy server, if configured with
a long enough retention to prevent additional downloads across a week or so
would minimize the required Internet traffic. The caching server would need
to be able to support caching of normal Internet traffic, as well as the
update packages. There might be an option in the cache configuration to
customize an extended retention period for content from specific URLs.

> Or you could set up a software iSCSI disk and point your WSUS server at
> it.

This would also work, as the server would see an iSCSI resource as a local
volume.

Thanks for the additional ideas, Harry.



--
Lawrence Garvin, M.S., MCITP:EA, MCDBA
Principal/CTO, Onsite Technology Solutions, Houston, Texas
Microsoft MVP - Software Distribution (2005-2009)

MS WSUS Website: http://www.microsoft.com/wsus
My MVP Profile: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/pro...awrence.Garvin

"Tommy" <> wrote in message
news:e88f3bb2-955e-4737-9625-...

> I'm not familiar with the iSCSI resource, but can it be shared by
> more than one WSUS server that uses its own DB.

While iSCSI does support sharing among multiple targets,

WSUS does *not* support sharing a filestore among multiple WSUS servers,
that are not members of a unique NLB cluster deployment.

You *will* have issues if you try to do this.


> Or can identical replica servers on the same subnet use the same DFS
> share without a backend SQL DB?

Each WSUS Server must have it's own database and it's own content store.

The only time a shared database or content store is supported is in an NLB
cluster. In that scenario, the content store can be placed on a DFS share,
which may be physically housed on a dedicated file server. It is *possible*
(but Not Supported), that your "NLB cluster" might only have one actual
front-end node in the cluster, allowing for the *possible* use of a DFS
share for an individual WSUS server. But even in this scenario, each WSUS
server would need to have it's own independent DFS share pointing to an
isolated folder tree exclusive to that WSUS server.



--
Lawrence Garvin, M.S., MCITP:EA, MCDBA
Principal/CTO, Onsite Technology Solutions, Houston, Texas
Microsoft MVP - Software Distribution (2005-2009)

MS WSUS Website: http://www.microsoft.com/wsus
My MVP Profile: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/pro...awrence.Garvin

Tommy wrote:

> I'm not familiar with the iSCSI resource, but can it be shared by
> more than one WSUS server that uses its own DB.

No, iSCSI is a SAN (storage area network) protocol, not a file sharing protocol.
Unless you're using an OS designed for clustering, only one server can access
an iSCSI disk at a time.

Harry.