In case you didn’t hear WSUS 3.0 Service Pack 2 is out.

If you utilize this tool to ensure your Windows Servers and Clients remain up to date on the latest software patches and service packs, then you will want to ensure your WSUS deployment stays on the latest build. As we discussed in a previous post, WSUS can make life easier. The new service pack has a number of new features and fixes.

Here’s a quick rundown of the new items included in SP2:

Upgrade
First off, WSUS 3.0 SP2 can be installed as an in-place upgrade from earlier versions of WSUS. The upgrade will preserve all of your settings and approvals. The user interface is compatible between WSUS 3.0 SP1 and SP2 on the client and the server.

In addition SP2 brings in support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

Reporting
This was one nicest features of WSUS, as admins could quickly report on servers and know instantly about the patch level on a specific machine or group of servers, but the reporting in previous versions still left something to be desired. New Update and Computer Status reports provide the ability to filter on updates approved for installation. You can run these reports from the WSUS console or use the API to incorporate this functionality into your own reports.

Software Updates
The new Service Pack bring in stability and reliability fixes for the WSUS server. The approval dialog now sorts computer groups alphabetically by group name - This was a big pain point for WSUS admins previously. Computer status report sorting icons are now functional in x64 environments. A new release of Windows Update Agent is included with WSUS 3.0 SP2 that provides improvements and fixes, such as support for APIs called by non-local system callers in a non-interactive session, and also included is support for IPV6 addresses greater than 40 characters.

Auto-Approval Rules
now include the ability to specify the approval deadline date and time for all computers or specific computer groups.
Update Files and Languages

Improved handling of language selection for downstream servers includes a new warning dialog that appears when you decide to download updates only for specified languages.

To download WSUS 3.0 SP2 go here.

Tags: Service Pack 2, Windows, WSUS