All, I was hoping that you can help me out here. I just installed a new WSUS server in a non-AD environment. It took sometime, but I got it working. Now, the only problem that I see is that the client does not want the machines patched on a weekly basis, and I cant get no downtime for this on a weekly basis. I was hoping if anybody knows of a way that I can schedule the test servers to pull down these patches on a monthly basis. When the new patches are realeased on the 2nd Tuesday of the month, I would like these test machines to pick them up on that Thursday. Thats basically how I would like to have these set up. If anybody has any insight, that would be great. SO far, I love this utility. But I just need to have a better patch schedule to propose to the client other then weekly, because I know they wont go for it. Thanks!

While it is true that you can not schedule the clients to check monthly with the WSUS server, that does not matter in most environments. I generally configure clients to check daily. No updates are delivered unless you approve them on the WSUS server. If you approve them monthly they only update monthly. The problem with scheduling the clients for once a mont updates (if you could) is that if you had not tested and approved the updates yet, the clients would have to wait another month to get the updates. In today's security environment that is not acceptable.

That is an option that I thought about. And probably the one I am going to go with. Just approve the patches that I want monthly. There's really no other way. And the only other option that I have is Update Expert that I hate. Thanks fo the reply!!!!

Consider also that you can create computer groups in WSUS. You can approve updates for your test machines on Tuesday evening, if all goes well you can then approve them for the next batch of computers on Wednesday. If a patch behaves badly you can approve it for removal. All of this is aided by having the computers check for updates daily.

Please let me know how to configure client machine in Non-AD Environment. If I know that I can route my client to get updates from Local WSUS-SERVER. Thanks,