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Microsoft has released Windows Update Services 3.0. I have been running the Release Candidate for a while now, and it's been performing really well. I'll be sure to update to the final version on wednesday when my small spring holiday ends.

Thankfully it's possible to upgrade to the final release version from the Release Candidate. That is not the case for any of the pre-RC versions of Windows Update Services 3.0, and if you are running one of beta versions you will need to uninstall it before installing the final version. That also means dropping the database and starting from scratch.

Also, if you use SSL for securing the Windows Update Services traffic, upgrading from RC to final will require that you reassign the certificate to the WSUS website.

I have not been able to find a detailed list of changes and bugfixes that has been made since the RC release yet, I'll be very thankful if anyone can point me in the right direction though.

On February 12th Microsoft released a public release candidate version of Windows Update Services 3.0, and today I decided to do an in place upgrade of the existing live WSUS 2.0 install in our network. The upgrade took a fair amount of time, as it had to remove the old WSUS, upgrade the MSDE/SQL Server Express installation we had as well as convert the database we had built up over a considerable timeframe. I'm sure a fresh installation of WSUS 3.0 would be much quicker.
Everything installed without a single problem, and the upgrade seems to be working as intended. I'll let it simmer a few days, over easter, before I return with a more detailed report on specific usage and any problems we might encounter.

So far it looks really good though, and the new MMC 3.0 based management console is grouped logically in an easy to understand way. I liked the old web interface for WSUS 2.0 but the new management tool is clearly an improvement.

My initial thought is that this looks like it'll be a great update for an already great service, have a look at the TechNet article for detailed information on whats new in 3.0.

One interesting thing I did note while looking around was that it's now possible to identify hardware directly from the WSUS console. It even reports virtual hardware from my VMware machines:

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I'm sure you can use the new reporting services in WSUS 3.0 to build custom reports that identify the virtualized hardware in your environment, as well as the physical devices.

Screenshots here, as usual.

In an earlier post, from September 2005, I mentioned Firefoxadm as a solution for centrally managing a corporate (Active Directory) based Firefox deployment. Today I stumbled across a project that seems to be moving towards the same goal.

The Firefox Corporate Project looks really interesting and although it requires a few manual steps it seems to be very easy to implement.

Using custom .adm templates and .MSI packages makes it as easy to manage Firefox as it is to manage Internet Explorer.

I still wonder though, why doesn't Mozilla build that kind of functionality into the standard package? It would really make sense for them to do so, if they really want larger organizations to switch over. I can't imagine that they don't want that?