Announcing System Center Updates Publisher 3.0
I am proud and excited to announce the release of System Center Updates Publisher (SCUP). This is the updated and rebranded Custom Updates Publishing Tool (CUPT) from Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 R2. To read more about SMS 2003 R2 please read here or here. This version of the tool works with the System Center Essentials (SCE) and the future release of System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007. SCUP is available to download here.
With a new version come changes, listed below are some of the bigger ones.
Installation pre-requisites
Just as CUPT had pre-requisites, SCUP does too but with this release there are a few more. The main one, which is not included in the installer package, is Windows Server Updates Service (WSUS) 3.0 Administration Console. SCUP uses some of the WSUS public APIs for publishing (more on that later) and update creation. This will have to be downloaded and installed onto your workstation prior to installing SCUP. You can find WSUS 3.0 here. Other than Microsoft Management Console (MMC) 3.0 (more info here), all other pre-requisites are bundled into the installation and installed automatically.
Publishing
The biggest change is that SCUP publishes updates to WSUS 3.0 to be consumed by SCE and SCCM. This is changed from the CUPT release where it directly published updates to Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 R2 sites servers. Therefore SCUP cannot be used in an SMS 2003 R2 environment for publishing. If you publish updates to SMS 2003 R2 you will need to continue using CUPT.
Compatibility Mode
The Software Distribution Package (SDP) schema has slightly changed in SCUP. There are a couple of rules that were deprecated in the new version. SCUP no longer supports software update definitions using the Registry Binary Value rule and the Digest attribute in the File Exists rule as it did in CUPT. Also there is a new schema addition for expiring an update. This new feature will be used to expire updates in WSUS which will then stop them from being included in future deployments.
Due to the fact you now have SCUP and CUPT which can create/edit/publish updates with different schema’s there needed a way for an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) to publish one catalog which can be consumed by SMS 2003 R2, SCCM 07 and SCE. To enable this scenario “Compatibility Mode” was created, which will only create valid SDP that can be consumed by both CUPT and SCUP. Meaning when “Compatibility Mode” is turned on you will produce SDP that does not contain expired updates and deprecated rules.
To enable “Compatibility Mode” open SCUP, click on Settings -> Advanced Tab -> Check “Enable compatibility mode with previous update format”.
Exporting/Publishing UI changes
The main UI change made in SCUP was to remove the creation of the published catalog to the “Export” wizard. This enabled the “Publish Update(s)” wizard to only do publishing to WSUS. Unlike when you publish in CUPT, you no longer need a catalog of updates pushed to the SMS 2003 R2 Site Server’s package source for scanning with the Inventory Tool for Custom Updates (ITCU). With SCUP you publish each individual update in to the WSUS database directly, no catalog generation is necessary. Therefore it was necessary to remove the creation of the published catalog to the Export wizard. This allowed all export catalog options to be located in the same wizard. Now when ISVs want to publish their catalogs to the web they can by choosing the “Export all updates in the updates publisher database that have the publish flag set” option in the Export Wizard. This option will create the catalog (cab file) as well as the signature (xml file) that can be posted online for use with SCUP/CUPTs subscribed catalogs.
Microsoft Update Catalog
In SCUP, you now have a link (Microsoft Catalog) on the main page to the Microsoft Update Catalog website. Imbedded into the link are required parameters needed to download and directly import your updates into your WSUS environment to be used with SCCM and SCE. Microsoft Update Catalog website provides updates, including hotfixes which are generally provided by Microsoft Customer Service & Support.
