SUS Overview

5/10/2007

Software Update Services (SUS)allows you to configure your own intranet update server that downloads Windows Updates from Microsoft. Implementing SUS servicing requires a separate SUS intranet server that manages the updates. This SUS intranet server is set up by an administrator to poll the public Microsoft Windows Update web site for updates for Windows XP Professional systems. If there are new updates available, these updates are downloaded to the SUS intranet server. Before these updates are applied to your Windows XP Embedded devices, they must be approved by an administrator. Because the updates are specific to Windows XP Professional or Home editions, an administrator must inspect the update, verify that it applied to Windows XP Embedded device, and test the update. After the update has been successfully tested, it can be made available to the Windows XP Embedded clients.

Although it is possible to configure client devices to directly download updates from the public Microsoft Windows Update web site, doing so may potentially corrupt your device. Because Windows Updates are specific to Windows XP Pro or Home editions, some of the updates may not apply to Windows XP Embedded.

Implementing SUS requires both client and server components, as follows:

• The client-side components that support SUS are added to your run-time image in Target Designer. After your run-time image is deployed, you configure SUS by updating the group policy on the device. An administrator can also configure the group policies by means of Active Directory.
• The SUS server component allows you to configure your own intranet Windows Update server. This intranet server polls the Microsoft Windows Update site and downloads all available Windows Updates. An administrator must approve or reject each update before it is made available to your Windows XP Embedded-based devices. SUS uses Internet Information Services (IIS) and Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) to download updates to clients.

The following illustration shows the overall process flow for delivering and approving updates using SUS.

The basic process flow is detailed in the following list:

1. The SUS intranet server polls the public Microsoft Windows Update site for Windows XP Professional updates.
2. The SUS intranet server downloads any new updates.
3. After new updates have been downloaded, an administrator must verify that each update applies to the Windows XP Embedded device. The administrator must then test each update on a sample device.
4. After the update has been verified and tested, it is made available on the SUS intranet server to be downloaded by the Windows XP Embedded clients.
5. At the next scheduled polling time, the Windows XP Embedded clients download the updates from the internal SUS server.

See Also

Other Resources

Software Update Services (SUS)
Servicing
Manage and Service a Run-Time Image