Microsoft is getting pretty good at publishing updates for OCS. The problem: do you want to pay attention to the download center every week? This creates the problem of finding out which updates you need for your OCS servers in a timely fashion. The base level Windows Update does not know about OCS; therefore, the standard level of operating system update will never discover that you need OCS updates. Another issue that arises is which OCS update package needs installation on which OCS server.
This may seem obvious, but you need to change your OCS host server over to Microsoft Update (from Windows Update) to enable OCS updates to be seen in some semi-automatic fashion. What follows is a short how-to for this task on Windows Server 2008. A similar process is used for Windows Server 2003.
Click the Start button and choose Windows Update.
Select “Get updates for more products”
Accept the Terms of Use and click “Next”
Choose how you want updates to work (I like to choose when and what when it comes to applying updates). Then click on “Install.” As a side note, if you have updates set to something like “check for updates but let me choose…” then this screen comes up, but if your Update is set to “install updates automatically (recommended)” then Update bypasses this option.
Update will grind away for a bit, and then return results. Review this information, and then take a look at “View available updates.”
Voila! I now have updates for my OCS install showing. Also note that the system picked up on the SQL Server 2005 Express install (yes, this is an OCS SE).
Happy patching. Your servers may need to be rebooted after applying the patches and updates so schedule accordingly! My SE and CWA servers asked for a reboot. The Mediation server(s) did not need rebooting. The Edge server did not want a reboot either.
When I have some spare time, I will figure out how to make this work in WSUS so that I do not have to hit five (or more!) different servers to update one system. This should be straightforward but one can never tell.
John Weber