What is the typical configuration for Windows Update on the server that hosts WSUS? Do you normally point it to itself at the target WSUS server or do you let it pull updates from Microsoft Update at manual intervals? Most of the documentation I can find focuses on setting up Windows Update settings on the client computers but not on the WSUS server.
1 Answer
My WSUS servers have always relied on themselves to update. In other words, the server itself pulls from WSUS to update just like any other machine, and the WSUS software in turn pulls down all updates from Microsoft's servers. To update the server itself, I use the "Windows Update" control panel and choose to install them when I want it done (none of my servers or workstations install updates automatically). This is on a Server 2012 R2 server, which was previously running Server 2008 R2.
I use Group Policy to assign the WSUS settings to all the machines in my domain, and my WSUS server showed up immediately in the "Unassigned computers" group because those policies had already applied. I don't know if that would happen if group policy is not being used and no manual configuration of the server's update server settings had been done, but I'm guessing not, and the server would not appear in WSUS until some configuration of the WSUS settings had been done on the server.
Hopefully that makes sense.
Do you normally point it to itself at the target WSUS server- Yes.