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        Automatic Updates for Servers?

Section(s): Security , Miscellaneous
Published on Sep 27, 2005.
Last Modified on Sep 27, 2005.
Last Modified by Mitch Tulloch.
Rated 2.1 out of 5 based on 8 votes.

Should the Automatic Updates (AU) feature be used to keep your servers patched?

Automatic Updates (AU) is designed mainly to keep client computers up to date with critical security patches. While AU is a feature of Windows server platforms also, it's generally not a good idea to use AU by itself to patch your servers. Why? Two reasons:

Patches should always be tested before being applied to mission-critical servers.
Patches often require a reboot after being applied to servers.

So while turning on AU on your servers and just letting patches be automatically downloaded and installed at 3 am, it can cause service interruption to clients in a 24x7 environment, and it has the potential to blow up your server should the patch break something unexpected.

About Mitch Tulloch

Mitch Tulloch was lead author for the Windows Vista Resource Kit from Microsoft Press, which is the book for IT pros who want to deploy, maintain and support Windows Vista in mid- and large-sized network environments. Mitch was also the author of Introducing Windows Server 2008 and technical project lead for the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit, both books also from Microsoft Press. For more information on these and other books by Mitch, see www.mtit.com .