Admins using Windows Server Update Services up in arms as Microsoft deprecates feature

There are other ways to keep things patched, but this one will sting for some

Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away, as administrators using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) will soon find out.

Windows Server 2025 remains in preview, but Microsoft has been busy letting users know what is set for removal and what will be deprecated in the release. WSUS fits into the latter category – still there for now, but no longer under active development.

This is a big deal for many administrators who rely on the feature to deploy and manage the distribution of updates and features in an enterprise environment. It'll even work on a network disconnected from the internet – download the patches to a connected computer, stick them on some removable media, import the patches to a WSUS server on the disconnected network, and away you go.

A tame administrator told El Reg: "We are migrating to Intune. It's a lot more complicated than WSUS, and it takes a lot longer to get set up."

"Such is progress!" he sighed.

Microsoft's advice is, unsurprisingly, to migrate to cloud tools. As well as the aforementioned Intune, there is also Windows Autopatch for client update management or Azure Update Manager for server update management. And there are plenty of third-party tools out there too, such as Ansible.

Microsoft's announcement has attracted comment. One user said: "Congratulations, you just made centralized automated patching subject to internal politics and budget constraints.

"I survived the era of Melissa, SQL Slammer, and other things that were solved when we no longer had to choose between paid patch management or trusting admins of every server to do the right thing. For those of you that did not live through that, buckle up!"

To be clear, being deprecated does not mean the feature is being removed. While features such as the IIS 6 Management Console, SMTP email server, and WordPad will be removed in Windows Server 2025 (any admins using WordPad for professional work should probably do some soul searching), Microsoft is simply confirming that WSUS "is no longer being actively developed."

However, the confirmation highlights the need for administrators still using WSUS to start thinking about a migration sooner rather than later. ®