Greetings,
One of the contributors to SCCM Community Trevor Jones asked on twitter about deploying Software Updates without content download i.e. without downloading software updates to the Deployment Package. I was also curious to test this out, so thought to start with my First Blog.
Scope: To enable "No Deployment Package" option in SUG deployment wizard and test the setting
Lab: SCCM Technical Preview Site TP 1901
Client PeerCache Enabled: True
Test Machine:
- VM-02: Operating System: Windows 1803, Installing Updates Using Microsoft update
- VM-03: Operating System: Windows 1803, Installing Updates using Client Peer Cache
Both machines are part of the same collection with Client Cache settings applied
Installing Updates Using Microsoft update
Process:
SUG is Created to have Cumulative Updates for January.
Right-click the SUG and directly deploy without downloading the updates. Enter the required details and move to the Deployment Package step as shown below, then select "No Deployment Package" and proceed ahead.
Evaluating Policy On Machine VM-02:
- Updatesdeployment.log: Policy has been received and deployment is available in Software Center.
- While other logs like Locationservices.log, contentTransfer.log, and DataTransfer.log, CAS.log checking information about Distribution Point.
ContentTransferManager.log
LocationServices.log
DataTranferServices.log
CAS.log
- As you can see from these logs, even though Deployment Package is not created client downloads the content from Microsoft. Updates are getting downloaded and then installed accordingly.
Installing Updates Using Microsoft update with Client Peer Cache enabled
Evaluating Policy On Machine VM-03:
- Updates are Available in Software Center, but additionally, in Log file you can, there are 2 Distribution Point listed, first point to branch cache machine another point to Microsoft website to download the content.
- LocationServices.Log: Which validates Distribution Point both PeerCache and MicrosoftDownload as highlighted below.
LocationServices.log
- On installing Software Update from Software Center, you can see entries in CAS.Log file that content is downloaded from PeerCache Machine instead of Microsoft download.
CAS.Log
- ContentTransfer.log and DataTransfer.log file shares information about downloading content from PeerCache.
ContentTransfer.log
DataTransfer.log
- Installation completed successfully as shown below.
Conclusion: The very first machine takes content from the Internet (Microsoft Catalog) and other machine uses PeerCache machine. As per my test scenario, if Peer Cache is not enabled then all the clients would go to Microsoft Catalog for downloading the content.
-- By Author Nawaz & Contributor Mamata
