WSUS Target Audience

Target Audience for ePO and WSUS Services

The primary audience for the ePO and WSUS Service Project includes network administrators and other staff and support personnel who manage groups of Windows computers, including laboratory machines.

Active Directory: Yes

Administrators who are responsible for domains that are members of the campus Active Directory should have no difficulty configuring their systems for either service via scripts or GPO (Group Policy Objects).  Appropriate documentation outlining procedures for system configuration will be provided to them by the EPO and/or WSUS service manager(s).

Non-Active Directory: Yes

Administrators who are responsible for domains that are not members of the campus Active Directory will have to follow procedures for the manual configuration of their machines (via system imaging software, login scripts, etc.)  These procedures will be provided to them by the EPO and/or WSUS service manager(s).

Unmanaged Machines: No

These services have not been expressly defined for use on personal, unmanaged machines due to a number of factors:

• Complexity of Setup

  The typical end user would be required to configure numerous options for the WSUS service while viewing the local system policy applet on their system.  Additionally, the configuration of this service may not the same between different versions of Windows.  Creating a document for each variation of the Windows operating systems would be difficult to execute, and would increase the likelihood that an end user may conceivably misconfigure their system by referencing the documentation for another version of Windows.

• Complexity of Support

  The CITES Help Desk has not been trained on how to support this service, and the numbers of issues that are likely to exist with a user whose network changes from home to UIUCnet to dialup and VPN would see a sharp increase in call volume for an already busy department of CITES.  Additionally, due to the potential volume of issues, the service managers for these services would not be equipped to handle each issue with the level of attention the issue may warrant.

• De-configuration

  When a student or staff member whose personal computer is configured to use either of these services leaves the University, the services would need to be reverted to their original state in order to help ensure that these computers are receiving updates and helping protect the users' systems and the other networks they contact.  In some cases, this is not a trivial operation.  The removal of the ePO computer-to-server application, for instance, may disable the functionality of the McAfee VirusScan antivirus application currently licensed to the University of Illinois.

For these reasons, end users will be encouraged to use the newest antivirus software available from the UIUC software distribution services,  to direct their personal computers to automatically request updates directly from the manufacturer (Microsoft, Apple, Red Hat, etc.), and to perform software update checks periodically to ensure that no patches have been missed that may be released out of a typical update cycle.

Last content change August 18, 2006