How to Rollout Windows Updates Without Internet Connection

A big thank you to our customer Prince James, who recommended the following tool for offline Windows Update installation:  

Portable Update, available at http://www.portableupdate.com/  

Another alternative tool is: WSUS Offline Update, available at http://www.wsusoffline.net/docs/  

Both tools allow you to download all current Windows Updates to a disk, folder, or ISO. You can then deploy that folder to each server and VM you have and save valuable time since the updates no longer need to be downloaded. WSUS offers a filter where you can select which updates you want to include and exclude; hence, you can also screen which types of updates you wish to install. To our knowledge, both of the above tools are freeware or shareware.  

Hints

If you are updating a Hyper-V Server host, take note of the file vmguest.iso, which usually resides in C:\Windows\System32, and contains the Hyper-V Integration Services disk in ISO format. Every now and then Microsoft updates these services on the host and the time stamp of the ISO file changes. When that occurs, you'll need to update the Hyper-V Integration Services on each VM by mounting the vmguest.iso file to each VM and starting the setup program.  

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Hyper-V Integration Services Update: Why You Need to Keep Them Up-to-Date at all Times

Avoid Saved State Backup and Check Hyper-V Integration Service Versions Automatically

Hyper-V Best Practices You Must Know

Before You Update Windows…

It always makes sense to run a backup using Windows Server backup software and a copy tool for documents. If the computer you are updating is actually a VM, it’s probably better to use a virtual machine backup solution, such as our Hyper-V backup, Windows Server 2012 backup, VirtualBox backup, or VMware backup to take an image of the VM before updating Windows.
BackupChain offers live backup of virtual machines so you don’t have to shut it down in order to make a copy of it.

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