Patching made painless

InfoWorld reports, Microsoft has released SUS (Software Update Services) 1.0 which allows companies to have their own update server within the intranet. Apart for being free, the software will reduce headaches for SysAdmins. In a big enterprise, updating servers and PC's is a big pain and I have been feeling this pain for quite some time now (not applying patches but validating those).

SUS uses the latest version of the Automatic Update client, installed as part of either Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 or Windows XP Service Pack 1, which allows redirection to the SUS server through use of an Active Directory group policy, or a modification of the desktop's or server's registry keys. SUS only accepts content that's signed by Microsoft, so security is much less of an issue than it might otherwise be.

But SUS just takes care of enterprises (big and SMB's), for individuals Windows Update is still the best bet.