SP2 - Upgrade via SUS or GPO ?

[mikiemov]

Hi all, Wonder if you can give me your thoughts please..

I have a 2000 domain, and 60 workstations all running XP Pro. I have used / tested SP2 and havent found any problems with it within our environment. And am therefore ready to update all workstations.

We use SUS for patch management, and GPOs for policies etc, so I need some advice on whether its best to update pc's via SUS or GPOs to minimise disruption / network load. I have tested updating via both methods and it takes about 15mins on an average pc. If I used GPO, I would "stagger" the install by applying to certain OUs at a time..

Any thoughts appreciated..

Mike,

 

[mikiemov]

anybody ????

 

[bcastner]

I just do not see the difference. Update SuS if you have not, and let it do the staggering of schedule (it will by itself).

 

[tf1]

SUS

Regards: tf1

 

[bcastner]

Yes, SuS. This free product by Microsoft just gets better and better.

But some great things are coming from SMS and MOM.

 

[mawilson]

I agree that SUS is great, but I don't want the Windows Firewall to be turned on on all of my PC's. Do I just need to use a GPO to turn it off? I am in a W2K AD.

Mark

 

[mikiemov]

Yes, can disable it using a GPO...

 

[WillShakespeare]

Mikiemov,

We used SUS, and that was fine. We have a number of GPOs for different taks, and we created one for the firewall separately. It took a while because we have lots of proprietary stuff we had to add to the exceptions list (50 executables!).

Anyway, I was wondering if you have any trouble with permissions to install Updates on Workstations using SUS? I have another post asking in this area, but if you know it would help.

You see our system only allows install if the user logged in is an administrator, and we cannot (due to security policy in a financial institution) allow people to have install privileges. And because people don't log off their machines for many weeks at a time, we cannot change to admin and back again via script easily (not that my boss likes this solution, but I'm handy with scripts and could do this easily enough).

How do you handle it?

Post in my other post if you have an answer... as this is a different thread!

Will