Windows 7: Windows Update Local Network Server

I'll be setting up a small network for a client in the next few days, which will consist of 9 computers, all running Windows 7 Professional.

Now, I was thinking, instead of each computer being set to downlaod updates, which would in effect result in the same update being downloaded 9 times, is there a way to perhaps have one of the computers (perhaps a 10th computer in the network can be added and assigned the job) download ALL updates, whether they are required or not, and then have Windows Update point to the "cache" machine and get their appropriate updates from there?

I ask because Internet bandwidth in South Africa is horribly expensive, and ISPs abitralily and forcibly slow you down if they detect that you are "over using your connection".

In order to keep costs down, I'd prefer to not have to setup a machine with Windows Server 2008, and would like to do this with ONLY Windows 7 Professional...

You need to wait for someone more knowledgeable than me, but I have one little pearl of wisdom for you! WSUS is the normal way to achieve this, and is in fact the only way I know about. We need to see if we can actually get it onto Vista/7. It will probably put up a fight, and unfortunately, due to server/client networking, probably not work, even if we get it on. However, we can try.

About WSUS. A Network Manager far more knowledgeable than I once told me that you have to be really, really careful with WSUS, and its setup. It does cache updates, and then the clients download them from your local server. It doesn't just stream updates to the client. This is more important than you might think. You MUST tell WSUS what products are installed across your clients, otherwise it will assume that they could have anything installed, and starts cacheing. This means that without careful setup, every single microsoft update ever released will be downloaded, be it for Windows 95, XP, Office 2003, SQL Server 2000, Windows Server 2008 R2, Visual Studio C# Express 2005, DirectX 3.0; you name it. That is a MASSIVE, MASSIVE download! Just thought you should know

Richard

From the general text I've just looked up on "Windows Server Update Services", it appears as though I'll need to setup a small server anyway, and that's going to more than double the cost to my customer.

Which is why I'd would have liked to have done this using only Windows 7 machines...

Hello Dzomlija,

I think this may be of use to you, after searching google regarding deploying updates.

Its called SCCM

System Center Configuration Manager: Overview

Not sure, but it may help.

Lucky

You can try the WSUS offline updater.

WSUS Offline Update (c't Projekte Offline Updater - ctupdate) - a knol by Joseph Engelhaupt#

This basically lets you download the updates once, save them to media of your choice, then install on multiple machines. This is not a networking solution though.

thanks, I'll have a look...

This thread actually contains about every solution to this problem: Is there an alternative to WSUS for Windows 7 updates? - Server Fault