WSUS doesn’t do a very good job of keeping itself clean. Yet, it needs to be clean and well-maintained in order to perform optimally. That’s why WSUS maintenance is absolutely essential. Fortunately, there are tools, like WAM, that can help fill in the gaps and keep your WSUS operating at its best. However, it’s good practice to first check the performance of your WSUS server.
Why WSUS Maintenance is Essential
With the expansion of the Microsoft Update Catalog, the WSUS database has also grown significantly. Back in 2017, WSUS maintenance began to emerge as a crucial topic as users encountered timeouts in environments with numerous software updates. These timeouts manifested in error messages like the following in the wsyncmgr.log:
- Sync failed: The operation has timed out. Source: Microsoft.UpdateServices.Internal.DatabaseAccess.ApiRemotingCompressionProxy.GetWebResponse Sync failed. Will retry in 60 minutes
Although the error message may suggest a networking or proxy issue due to the reference to “ApiRemotingCompressionProxy,” it typically indicates a timeout in the API call to the WSUS Administration IIS website when executing a SQL query for all published updates. This issue generally happens because SQL maintenance such as re-indexing, custom index creation, and other WSUS maintenance steps have never been performed.
Hence, keeping WSUS properly maintained is now more essential than ever to prevent such issues and ensure smooth operation.
Check WSUS Performance
Before you start WSUS maintenance, you should get a baseline of how your WSUS database is performing. The stored procedure below will retrieve all updates in WSUS. The spSearchUpdates stored procedure is called during each software update point synchronization in ConfigMgr or WSUS.
Ideally, this query is executed in under 30 seconds in a healthy environment. If the query takes longer than 150 seconds, you may have sync failures and other WSUS performance issues.
Perform the following actions in SQL Management Studio > Connect to the SQL or WID Instance > Right-Click the SUSDB > New Query > Type: exec spSearchUpdates > Execute or F5.
WSUS Automated Maintenance & Performance Optimization
The best and easiest way to ensure WSUS is optimized and performing its best is to use WAM. It automates maintenance and cleanup of your WSUS environment so you don’t have quite so much to do in this area. WAM does all of the following and more:
- Backing up the database
- Declining multiple types of updates including superseded, beta, preview, expired and Itanium by default
- Cleaning up computer objects
- Cleaning up the synchronization logs with Microsoft
- Removing declined updates from the database
- Running the database maintenance routine
- Running the Server Cleanup Wizard (SCW)
Ultimately, if WSUS isn’t properly maintained, it will become slow, bloated, and lead to errors that steal your time.
Keep WSUS healthy, optimized, and maintained; get WAM!
At AJ Tek, our vision is to make IT simple and automated for other IT professionals. Our flagship product is WAM, WSUS Automated Maintenance. This system performs all of the tasks that a WSUS Administrator needs to do to maintain WSUS properly only leaving the approving of updates and reporting to the WSUS Administrator.
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