How to install WSUS server on Hyper V virtual machine

As many businesses continue to reduce their use of physical servers, a frequently asked question arises: is it a good idea to virtualize Windows Server update service (WSUS) servers? The short answer: yes. This article showed you how to run WSUS in an Hyper-V virtual machine.

Can WSUS run in a virtual machine?

1 in a nutshell, it works. If you plan to run WSUS on Hyper-V, WSUS is not usually required to run WSUS on Windows Server 2008 R2. To be on the safe side, you need to deploy WSUS 3 SP2. As a general rule, WSUS before SP2 does not work in full collaboration with Windows Server 2008 R2, nor does it help with managing Windows 7 clients.

What is the easiest way to virtualize the WSUS server?

If you are currently running WSUS 3 on a physical server, I would recommend a migration upgrade. To do this, set up a virtualized WSUS server, configure it to look exactly like your physical WSUS server, and synchronize it. Once the synchronization process is complete, the virtual WSUS server is reconfigured as a standalone machine. You can then disable the physical WSUS server.

This approach offers two main advantages. First, it makes it easy to upgrade the operating system of the WSUS server, if necessary. Another advantage is that the downtime this provides is much shorter than the standard physical to virtual machine (P2V) migration, because the physical WSUS server continues to serve the user while your virtual WSUS server is deployed.

What kind of functionality can I get from a virtualized WSUS server?

A single WSUS server can handle up to 25,000 clients. However, this assumes that sufficient resources have been configured and that SQL Server runs on a single server (physical or virtual). Some enterprises use more than one front-end server, so they can get more powerful functions.

What are the ways to make WSUS fault-tolerant?

In a physical server environment, WSUS ensures fault tolerance by eliminating any single 1 point of failure. You will typically need to set up a network load balancing (NLB) cluster to provide high availability to WSUS servers. Of course, WSUS relies on SQL Server, and the preferred way to ensure that SQL Server has fault tolerance is to set up a cluster of SQL Server with failover.

While it is possible to re-establish this high availability architecture in the Hyper-V infrastructure, building an Hyper-V cluster instead is generally considered to be a better bet than one. If your host servers are already clustered, then clustering WSUS and SQL servers is not necessary (at least from a fault-tolerant perspective).

If the Hyper-V host is not clustered (and setting up an Hyper-V cluster is not an option by any means), then I would recommend going ahead and setting up a cluster architecture for virtualized WSUS and SQL servers. However, you must make sure that you do not put multiple WSUS or SQL servers on one common Hyper-V server, as this will offset the benefits of clustering the WSUS and SQL servers.

What network bandwidth do I need?

There are no predetermined rules for providing network bandwidth to virtualized WSUS servers. Keep in mind one thing though: there are a number of unusual problems that can arise due to insufficient bandwidth. I recommend, if possible, having one physical network adapter dedicated to your virtual WSUS server. If you are forced to share a network adapter with multiple virtual servers, use a network monitoring tool to make sure there is no congestion on the physical network connection.

If network congestion becomes an issue, remember that WSUS can be restricted at the server or client level by using assembly policy Settings. You can find the client restriction policy in the assembly policy object editor (Assemble Policy Object Editor) and access Computer Configuration(computer configuration) in turn > Administrative Templates(management templates) > Network (network) > This setting can be found on Background Intelligent Conveying Service(background intelligent transport service).

Is there anything special to consider regarding the SQL database?

It is usually not mandatory to run SQL Server on a single machine (physical or virtual), so you can allocate resources directly to the database server. I also recommend running Cleanup Wizard(cleanup wizard) to defragment the database once every few months. Doing so helps the database run at its best, which is extremely important in a virtualized environment.

Another point to keep in mind is that SQL Servers tends to be input/output intensive. Therefore, if you are going to virtualize the SQL server, consider using a dedicated physical storage system so that the input/output load of SQL does not affect other virtual machines.