Understanding the Behavior of the WSUS 3.0 Upgrade
[Today's tip comes to us courtesy of Mark Stanfill]
WSUS 3.0 is being offered today as an update for servers running Windows Server 2003 SP1 and WSUS 2.0 (release or SP1). However there is an exclusion for SBS servers that will not automatically upgrade your SBS servers. This is a change to the announcement previously made on the WSUS blog [here] that the WSUS 3.0 server and client package would be automatically be pushed out to all servers. This applies to all SBS servers - Release, SP1, and R2.
Because of the number of fixes included in WSUS 3.0 (primarily the client update to fix svchost CPU spike issues), WSUS 3.0 is highly desirable for many SBS environments. If you plan on updating your SBS server, this is a full supported path, but a few cautions should be taken. First, make sure you have a complete backup of your server. This includes a System State backup and a complete copy of your WSUS data directories and database. Next, manually install WSUS 3.0 (see link below). As a best practice, disconnect all but one client machine for testing to make sure that the client works with the updated client (clients will be updated automatically the next time they connect). Before installing WSUS 3.0 on SBS, make sure you read the WSUS 3.0 on SBS white paper (described here; direct download here).
You can manually download WSUS 3.0 here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E4A868D7-A820-46A0-B4DB-ED6AA4A336D9&displaylang=en
The WSUS blog has more information on this update here:
http://blogs.technet.com/wsus/archive/2007/05/22/updates-for-wsus-available-today.aspx
