SCCM Software Updates Synchronization and Troubleshooting Failures

SCCM Software Updates Synchronization and Troubleshooting Failures

Part 1

There is no much change in concept of patching process such as update synchronisation, download, and deployment in configuration manager 2012, when compare with SCCM 2007. Software Update Point is the SCCM site server role responsible for downloading and maintaining patch activities. Before going with detail explanation of synchronization; it is recommended to know something about Software updates. The updates in SCCM composed of two major parts

 Metadata - The information about each newly released Software update is called Metadata; this data is downloaded and stored in site database.

Software Update file - The file that client downloads and run to install software updates.

Software Update Synchronization

WSUS synchronization activities is scheduled in SCCM, so whenever this activity executed, WSUS(Software update point) connects with upstream server or Microsoft update to retrieve new software update metadata. The site server present in the top hierarchy such as CAS or Primary site that have SUP and WSUS installed will usually synch with upstream WSUS or Microsoft update.
SCCM site server Component responsible for synchronization: SMS_WSUS_SYNC_MANAGER

Flow of Synchronization

User initiated synchronization,

SMS_WSUS_SYNC_MANAGER request the SUP server that has WSUS installed, present in top level hierarchy to initiate the synch.

Synchronization against Microsoft update or upstream WSUS server happens.

Any changes (metadata) reported during synchronization inserted to the WSUS Database.

Once synch against Microsoft catalog completed , the WSUS synch manager synchronize the updated metadata from WSUS database to Configuration Manager Database and it is stored as Configuration Item in site server database

Finally SMS_WSUS_SYNC_MANAGER create successful status message 6702.

Synchronization fails in following cases:

Improper installation of WSUS or SUP during initial installation.

Proper port setting is not maintained.
Change in synchronization schedule.
The computer account have problem in accessing virtual directories of WSUS website in IIS

How to identify errors during synchronization failure?

Check for the status id, if it is other then 6702, then it denotes the synchronization failure. Please check for below logs

Wsyncmgr.log

The wsyncmgr.log file is located on the site server in the <ConfigMgrInstallationPath>\Logs folder. When there are synchronization failure, WSUS Synchronization Manager writes entries to the log file with the specific errors..

WCM.log

You cannot see any entries in WCM.log as part of the synchronization process, but we can get some clues related with synchronization failure .WSUS Configuration Manager connects to WSUS running on the active software for every certain period and if there exist any connection problems , then it can be logged in this log file.

WSUSctrl.log

This logs Provides information about the configuration, database connectivity and health of the WSUS server for the site.


I will continue  Part 2 (downloading and scheduling update deployment) in my next post.


Thank you guysJ