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What kind of redundancy or backup do I need for WSUS? |
| One has to apply a certain amount
of cost-effectiveness thought to the issue of investing hardware, software,
and administration time into redundant systems -- assuming that the
application even supports redundancy. WSUS does not, nor is there really any
reason for it to do so. When the amount of time necessary to rebuild a system is less than the amount of time necessary to maintain a redundant system, one does not choose to build and maintain the redundant system. When the amount of time necessary to rebuild a system is less than the amount of time to restore a system, one does not choose to make backups. Having said that.... A monthly backup of the System State, %PROGRAMFILES% folder, and \WSUS\MSSQL$WSUS\Data\SUSDB* files following the approvals process can be restored on a virgin Windows Server in about 15 minutes after a new OS is installed. The content is already backed up... it's called microsoft.com -- except for those organizations who pay a premium for Internet bandwidth. For them, I would suggest investing in a DVD-RAM unit and burning the content library to DVD on a regular basis. If you're going to go the DVD-RAM route....A monthly Ghost image can be restored on a blank hard drive in about 30 minutes. Since the data only changes monthly, the idea of 'redundancy' is not really appropriate in this application. Truth is.. I'm not backing up my WSUS server either. I can reinstall, reconfigure, and resynchronize the whole machine in a few hours. Since the odds of losing the server when its absolutely needed is less than 1 in 30, and even then a four to six hour delay will be insignificant in terms of patching clients -- most clients won't even get patched for 18-36 hours after you approve the updates for installation. |