Clean Your WSUS Server

patrickgreen2429 · 2011-10-31T08:15:15.000Z

This How-To is designed to show you how to most effectively clean your WSUS server of old, depreciated or superceded updates. This how-to assumes that you have already selected the correct update classifications, products, and languages for your environment. If you still need to do that, see this How-To here: http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/2572

Step 1: Open the Windows Update Services MMC

Step 2: Select the All Updates View

Set the display to show the Approval status of ‘Any except Declined’ with a Status of ‘Any’. Click Refresh.

Step 3: Display the Supercedence Column

Supercedence_Column.jpg362×529 42.1 KB

Right-click the column headers and select Supercedence.

Step 4: Sort by Supercedence

Left-click on the Supercedece Column.

Step 5: Select and Decline the Superceded Updates

Supercedence_Icons.jpg827×174 38.3 KB

The updates to be declined have one of two particular flowchart symbols for their updates pictured in the attached image. Select the correct updates and Decline them by either right-clicking the selected updates and clicking decline or by pressing the decline button in the action pane.

Step 6: Run the Server Cleanup Wizard

WSUS_Cleanup.jpg650×573 56.9 KB

Make sure you have all options selected in the wizard and let it run. It will delete the files from the declined updates.

Step 7: OPTIONAL: Automatic Approval Options

In the automatic approval options, under the advanced tab, there is an option to automatically approve update revisions for previously approved updates and subsequentially decline the now expired updates. I suggest you select them.

At this point, you should have cleaned out a large amount of old, unneeded updates and created plenty of new space. Have a great day.

devonschreiner7243 · 2011-10-31T10:45:27.000Z

Probably not something everyone thinks of on a regular basis but should be done. Thanks!

mpk · 2011-11-01T17:21:05.000Z

What a simple easy concept that I’ve never thought of. I did this and 3,200 got declined and deleted. Thanks for the effort.

jaguar · 2011-11-04T12:22:16.000Z

Short, sweet, and to the point, good work.

iahlm · 2011-11-04T12:27:26.000Z

Nice, thank you!

justin.davison · 2011-11-04T12:28:14.000Z

Nice, I recently hit a point that makes this very useful to me

mike-brown · 2011-11-04T12:30:25.000Z

Sweet…very worthy of contrib of the week!

Denis-Kelley · 2011-11-04T12:42:41.000Z

Nice how to!

jasonjohnson3258 · 2011-11-04T13:12:58.000Z

2200+ unneeded updates removed. Well done.

tmantman · 2011-11-04T14:06:11.000Z

Thanks for the tip. Cleaned up 2.25 GB of space.

timjackson4638 · 2011-11-04T15:15:14.000Z

Unhiding the supercedence column is a great tip!

chrisconlan9752 · 2011-11-05T19:26:04.000Z

Really appreciate this article. I don’t think the old sys admins EVER worked on the WSUS server because when I took over there were thousands of updates that needed approval. This just cleared out over 3000.

pbp · 2011-11-07T07:42:57.000Z

Thanks for the insight to keep WSUS manageable.

gregehrendreich2738 · 2011-11-08T11:10:00.000Z

I never even considered that there were other columns to unhide! Great tip!

liquidram · 2011-11-21T11:21:32.000Z

Seems very straight forward. Good job!

pietvandermaas3115 · 2011-12-05T07:48:43.000Z

Thanks for the tip! Great Work!

calmeacham · 2011-12-08T01:27:02.000Z

Excellent work. Been working with WSUS for quite a while and this simple clean up tip has totally escaped me.

anneschouten9695 · 2011-12-08T01:31:36.000Z

Thanks for the tip. I expected however the server cleanupwizard to do this. As this is appearently not the case i’ll have to do this by hand as of now. I just deleted 26 GB of supersedes updates.,
Thanks a million!!!

svenhahn8895 · 2011-12-08T02:29:16.000Z

Thank you for this how-to.

peter28408544 · 2011-12-08T02:36:47.000Z

Thanks to the tip. Very good Job!!!