Evaluating WSUS Offline Update Tool: Risks, Benefits, and Major Update Handling

Hello.

I would like to know your opinion (yours to be exact).

It is worth using the tool WSUS Offline Update ?

Theoretically, it will make the installation of updates much faster, and will save your connection. However, many questions arise:

1. Is there a risk that any of the updates will fail and WSUS Offline Update will damage / destabilize the built-in automatic update system?

2. Is there a risk that WSUS Offline Update will try to reinstall / uninstall / damage it despite the presence of a given update?

3. Every now and then a major update is downloaded (release / compilation?) - how does WSUS Offline Update behave then (especially not updated, running on a computer with the latest compilation / major update)?

4. Generally I wonder whether to use WSUS Offline Update on my computers / take risks (or maybe there is no risk)?

5. Updates can clog all available link. From what I can see, the default update policy allows users, both from our network and from the Internet (it turns out that we can clog our link - upload - because other users download updates from our computer. change:



I guess the best I can do (to minimize link usage) is to disable:



Thanks in advance for all suggestions and hints.

Thank you and best regards
Mariusz

I have used this on critical production systems with no problems.
Generally, this soft does not use any of its own update upload technology. It downloads a list of updates from Microsoft, downloads them all, for example, to a board and then installs them one by one. No philosophy. I see no greater risk than with normal system patching.
Of course, before the updates are installed, the dependencies between them, the current status of the system update, etc. are checked. This is done on the basis of a database from MS, the Offline Tool has no logic of its own.
There is no risk that an older version of the update will be installed than is already installed. Just like you can't do it manually without the offline tool.

In short - use it confidently.

If you have more computers to do, it is of course best to set up a Wsus server

So it would seem that I would rather not mess up anything in the system. If there are no people with bad experience here, then maybe I will actually start using on the machines I build / maintain. If it doesn't come with any additional risks, why not.

I am most wondering how this tool behaves with large updates, such as Anniversary, For creators (because by default, after downloading such an update, the system probably re-installs, keeping the current settings (at least it gives the impression).

MES Mariusz wrote:

how this tool behaves with big updates like Anniversary, For creators

I haven't tweaked it, but as I said, this tool is pretty "dumb" and works like a download-install script as if you were doing it manually. So it can be assumed that such large updates will also follow, as if nothing had happened.