Determine WSUS Capacity Requirements

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server Update Services

Hardware and database software requirements are driven by the number of client computers being updated in your organization. The following tables offer guidelines for server hardware and database software, based on the number of client computers being serviced. A WSUS server using the recommended hardware can support a maximum number of 30,000 clients. Both the system partition and the partition on which you install WSUS must be formatted with the NTFS file system.

Important

WSUS 3.0 cannot be installed on a compressed drive. Please check that the drive you choose is not compressed.

Minimum hardware recommendations

Hardware Low-end 500 or fewer clients Typical 500–3,000 clients High-end 3,000–20,000 clients, or rollup of 30,000 clients Super high-end 10,000 clients, or rollup of 100,000 clients

CPU

1 GHz

1.5 GHz or faster

3 GHz hyper threaded processor, x64 hardware

3 GHz hyper threaded dual processor

Graphics card

16 MB hardware accelerated PCI/AGP video card capable of 1-24*86*16bpp

16 MB hardware accelerated PCI/AGP video card capable of 1-24*86*16bpp

16 MB hardware accelerated PCI/AGP video card capable of 1-24*86*16bpp

16 MB hardware accelerated PCI/AGP video card capable of 1-24*86*16bpp

RAM

1 GB

2 GB

2 GB

4 GB

Page file

At least 1.5 times physical memory

At least 1.5 times physical memory

At least 1.5 times physical memory

At least 1.5 times physical memory

I/O subsystem

Fast ATA/IDE 100 hard disk or equivalent SCSI drives

Fast ATA/IDE 100 hard disk or equivalent SCSI drives

Fast ATA/IDE 100 hard disk or equivalent SCSI drives

Fast ATA/IDE 100 hard disk or equivalent SCSI drives

Network card

10 MB

100 MB

1 GB

1 GB

Hard drive—system partition

1 GB

1 GB

1 GB

1 GB

Hard drive—content storage

20 GB

30 GB

30 GB

30 GB

Hard drive—SQL Server installation

2 GB

2 GB

2 GB

2 GB

Note

These guidelines assume that WSUS clients are synchronizing with the server every eight hours (for the high-end configuration) or every two hours (for the super high-end configuration). If they synchronize more often, there will be a corresponding increment in the server load. For example, if clients synchronize twice a day, the load will be twice as much as if they synchronize once a day.

Note

Increasing the number of languages will also increase the load. Supporting five languages rather than one language will approximately double the size of the content directory.