WSUS – BITS download at full speed

With WSUS you may desire the option to store the updates locally and if so this tip will assist you.

There is a nifty way to get the initial girth of downloads synchronized which involves a downloaded tool and a command with switches.  The tool toggles the BITS services to fully throttle up its bandwidth and prioritize itself.  The tool is the Server Diagnostic Tool aka WSUSDebugTool.exe.  After downloaded you run a command to its path with the following syntax:

path\WsusDebugTool.exe /tool:setforegrounddownload

When you are satisfied and want to return to the previous condition you then run with this syntax:

path\WsusDebugTool.exe /tool:resetforegrounddownload

FYI…

By design BITS 2.0 (currently in use) watches the NIC activity of the WSUS machine and decides when to take or give bandwidth for downloading patches.  In this way it uses the bandwidth intelligently.  The next Windows 2008 version of BITS 3.0 will take this a step further and actually watch the gateway.  By doing this and coupled with GPO involvement it will toggle the bandwidth based on this definitive threshold point so as to best assure that the bandwidth is adjusted to reach the intended maximum effects.  Sometimes the gateway and the WSUS server’s external NIC can be the same thing as in the current SBS 2003 Premium w/ ISA topology.  However the writing is already on the wall that ISA will no longer be deployed in SBS using that topology starting with the next 2008 “Cougar” version.

Windows Server 2003 SP2 (32-bit x86) – WSUS revision released

Perhaps this is a minor tweak but hopefully they’ve worked some of the networking wrinkles and pain out of deploying Windows 2003 SP2.  A few other releases and revisions.

Windows Server 2003 portal site

P.S.  – anyone else notice this is the third Tuesday in a row for patch releases?  Maybe we are going to weekly patches as opposed to the once-a-month scheme (just kidding Microsoft).

SBS R2 install and the ASP.Net version

While installing SBS R2, I recently ran across a limited web site lack of display issue and this began a conversation in the SBSC Private Managed Newsgroup under Windows Server Small Business Server.  Below I’ll copy and share the post I made on 8/21/2007.

Initially the thread advised using ASP.Net v. 1.1.4322 across all websites and at that stage of installation everything worked as anticipated.  After later changes happened resulting from remaining R2 Technologies Disk items and others described below, it was required otherwise to use the latest ASP.Net version.   I have not had any problems viewing Monitoring and Reporting or having RWW timeouts since upgrading to ASP.Net 2.0.50727.

“today after running through the rest of the install:

R2 Technologies Disk (Exchange SP2, SharePoint SP2, Update Services aka WSUS 2.0), then configuring IMF, adjusting SharePoint Central Admin UI settings, adding RipCurl Server side patch 911829, installing MS Report Viewer 2005, upgrading to WSUS 3.0, verifying Windows Server SP2 is installed and all other patches are up to date, and then making necessary changes for Outlook 2003 SP2 slipstreamed for SBS Client App deployment

…I discovered strange behavior in viewing browser views from within Server Management or Companyweb.  The message said to go to Application log in Event Viewer for more information.  There I was referred to KB894903 which provides for the ASP.Net version issue fix/upgrade.  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894903

Prior to the following step I made sure that SharePoint Central Admin website and Companyweb were both set to use ASP.Net version 2.0.50727.  The WSUS 3.0 Administration site does not offer the ability to change ASP.Net versions.

What I did was to type the following command: 

“stsadm -o upgrade -forceupgrade -url http://companyweb” (no quotations)

this was done from the directory of STSADM which by default is at:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\BIN

Now done everything seems to be working as intended and I have the benefit of using the more secure version of ASP.Net”