WSUS Automated Maintenance (WAM)© is a software solution that takes the maintenance required for WSUS and automates it. It was created by Adam J. Marshall and is licensed on a yearly subscription basis through AJ Tek.
There are a number of different areas that require maintenance for WSUS. Some of them are:
- Backing up the database.
- If using the Drivers category, removing the current listed drivers to clean up the bulk of the drivers that are old and not used. New drivers will sync normally.
- Declining multiple types of updates including superseded, beta, preview, expired and Itanium by default.
- Compressing update revisions.
- Cleaning up computer objects.
- Renaming OS descriptions to make it easier to identify systems.
- Cleaning up the synchronization logs with Microsoft.
- Removing declined updates from the database.
- Running the database maintenance routine.
- Running the Server Cleanup Wizard (SCW)
WAM allows you to take back control of your WSUS instance (or SUP/DP instances in an SCCM environment) and frees up time for other priorities. If WSUS is not maintained properly, it will become slow, bloated, and cause errors that will take away valuable time from an IT Administrator to troubleshoot and resolve.
How to Justify a WAM Subscription?
As an IT professional, your employer pays for your knowledge and expertise so it’s important to spend your time wisely.
While keeping up with WSUS maintenance is crucial, it can eat up a lot of your time. For many companies, a subscription to WAM is actually the most cost-effective method to automate WSUS maintenance.
How Many WAM Licenses Do I Need?
The basic WAM license is called a Single or Upstream license. This is the only license you need for a single WSUS server. In this scenario, the WSUS server connects directly to Microsoft Update to download updates.
In addition to the Single or Upstream license, you may need to purchase additional Downstream or Disconnected Downstream WAM licenses.
Why We Don’t Offer a Free Trial of WAM
At AJ Tek, our vision is to make IT simple and automated for professionals. Our flagship product, WSUS Automated Maintenance (WAM) embodies this philosophy by performing all the tasks that a system administrator would need to do, leaving only approving updates and reporting to the WSUS Administrator.
Our software has quickly become the standard in WSUS maintenance and from time to time, we get questions about why we don’t offer a free trial of WAM. The short answer is that our software works too well on the initial run.
Features
Super Easy Installation
Guided installer for a simple installation experience. It also comes with an unattended installation procedure for easy deployment to multiple systems, or for server core installs.
Support Included
Support is included for active subscriptions on the latest version of the software.
Simple Configuration Experience
The installer handles the configuration experience. You take the standard installation (blue USB), all defaults are selected. You take the advanced configuration (red USB), you stay in WSUS-land and we show you just how far the WSUS hole goes. Remember: all we’re offering are plentiful options.
Backup the WSUS Database
Backs up the WSUS database (WID or Local SQL Server). Remote SQL Servers should have an alternative method like an enterprise backup solution already so WAM will not back them up.
Indexes the WSUS Database
Add WSUS Index Optimization to the database to increase the speed of many database operations in WSUS by approximately 1000-1500 times faster.
Remove Drivers
Remove all existing drivers from the WSUS Database trimming down the number of updates in the database. If the Drivers classification is checked, new driver updates will sync and will be kept under control (Default; Optional).
Remove Obsolete Updates
This stream will use SQL code to execute Microsoft’s stored procedures that will return the update id of each obsolete update in the database and then remove it.
Compress Update Revisions
This stream will use SQL code to execute Microsoft’s stored procedures that will return the update id of each update revision that needs compressing and then compress it.
Remove Declined Updates
Remove declined updates from the WSUS Database.
Decline Multiple Types of Updates
Shrink your WSUS Content folder’s size by declining multiple types of updates. There are over 80 types of updates possible for declining for full customization. The default selected ones are superseded updates, expired updates, preview updates, Itanium updates, and Beta updates.
List of Update Types
- Superseded
- Expired
- Preview
- Itanium
- Beta
- IE7
- IE8
- IE9
- IE10
- Microsoft Edge (Stable)
- Microsoft Edge (Beta)
- Microsoft Edge (Dev)
- LanguagePacks
- SharepointUpdates
- ComputerUpdates32bit
- Embedded
- ARM64
- WinXP
- Windows 7
- SecurityOnly
- ThirdParty
- Win10_1507
- Win10_1511
- Win10_1607
- Win10_1703
- Win10_1709
- Win10_1803
- Win10_1809
- Win10_1903
- Win10_1909
- Win10_2004
- Win10_20H2
- Win10_21H1
- Win10_21H2
Microsoft Office Types
Specific Language Types
- Arabic (Saudi Arabia) (ar-SA)
- Bulgarian (Bulgaria) (bg-BG)
- Czech (Czech Republic) (cs-CZ)
- Danish (Denmark) (da-DK)
- German (Germany) (de-DE)
- Greek (Greece) (el-GR)
- Spanish (Spain) (es-ES)
- Spanish (Mexico) (es-MX)
- Estonian (Estonia) (et-EE)
- Finnish (Finland) (fi-FI)
- French (Canada) (fr-CA)
- French (France) (fr-FR)
- Hebrew (Israel) (he-IL)
- Croatian (Croatia) (hr-HR)
- Hungarian (Hungary) (hu-HU)
- Italian (Italy) (it-IT)
- Japanese (Japan) (ja-JP)
- Korean (Korea) (ko-KR)
- Lithuanian (Lithuania) (lt-LT)
- Latvian (Latvia) (lv-LV)
- Norwegian (Bokmal) (Norway) (nb-NO)
- Dutch (Netherlands) (nl-NL)
- Polish (Poland) (pl-PL)
- Portuguese (Brazil) (pt-BR)
- Portuguese (Portugal) (pt-PT)
- Romanian (Romania) (ro-RO)
- Russian (Russia) (ru-RU)
- Slovak (Slovakia) (sk-SK)
- Slovenian (Slovenia) (sl-SI)
- Serbian (Latin, Serbia) (sr-latn-rs)
- Swedish (Sweden) (sv-SE)
- Thai (Thailand) (th-TH)
- Turkish (Turkey) (tr-TR)
- Ukrainian (Ukraine) (uk-UA)
- Chinese (Simplified) (zh-CN)
- Chinese (Hong Kong) (zh-HK)
- Chinese (Traditional) (zh-TW)
Rename OS Descriptions
This stream will rename the operating system descriptions of client systems in the WSUS MMC console. You can then use the GUI Console to sort by the OSDescription to easily gain valuable insights into what operating systems are installed in your organization.
Windows Clients
- Windows 10 Home
- Windows 10 Pro
- Windows 10 Pro N
- Windows 10 Pro for Workstations
- Windows 10 Pro N for Workstations
- Windows 10 Enterprise
- Windows 10 Enterprise N
- Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB/LTSC
- Windows 10 Education
- Windows 10 Education N
- Windows 10 Pro Education
- Windows 10 Pro N Education
Windows Clients
- Windows 11 Home
- Windows 11 Pro
- Windows 11 Pro N
- Windows 11 Pro for Workstations
- Windows 11 Pro N for Workstations
- Windows 11 Enterprise
- Windows 11 Enterprise N
- Windows 11 Enterprise LTSB/LTSC
- Windows 11 Education
- Windows 11 Education N
- Windows 11 Pro Education
- Windows 11 Pro N Education
Windows Server
- Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard
- Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter
- Windows Server 2012 Standard
- Windows Server 2012 Datacenter
- Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard
- Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter
- Windows Server 2016 Essentials
- Windows Server 2016 Standard
- Windows Server 2016 Datacenter
Windows Server
- Windows Server 2019 Essentials
- Windows Server 2019 Standard
- Windows Server 2019 Standard Evaluation
- Windows Server 2019 Datacenter
- Windows Server 2022 Standard
- Windows Server 2022 Standard Evaluation
- Windows Server 2022 Datacenter
- Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2016
- Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2019
Clean Synchronization Logs
Clean out all the synchronization logs that have built up over time (configurable, with the default keeping the last 14 days of logs).
Computer Object Cleanup
Computer Object Cleanup (configurable, with the default of deleting computer objects that have not synced within 30 days).
Prune IIS Logs
The Prune IIS Logs Stream will delete all log files (that is, files ending with .log) found in the logging folder for the WSUS IIS site. By default, the stream will remove log files older than 2 weeks. Files are checked not based on the date they were created, but when they were last modified.
Server Cleanup Wizard
Runs the built-in Server Cleanup Wizard (SCW) to actually carry out the removal of files on the file system.
Display Newly Added Products & Classifications
If you are interested in keeping track of what new products and/or classifications have been added to WSUS, we have included a stream that will include this information in the WAM report. The default will display new products and classifications that have been added to WSUS in the last 31 days.
Database Maintenance
Run the Recommended SQL database Maintenance script on the actual SQL database.
Reporting Options
Save the Report
You can set it up to always save the report. Options for either TXT (default) or HTML.
Email the Report
You can set it up to always email the report. Options for either TXT or HTML (default). You can also have it as a PDF Attachment to the email. If the report fails, WAM will fall back to saving the report storing a TXT log file. The TXT log that it creates will be prepended with the notification that the email failed to send and will give the full error message for troubleshooting.
WAM Utilities & The WAM Shell
To aid administrators we have developed a few utilities for adjusting certain WSUS settings, which are especially convenient for WSUS installs on servers that lack a graphical user interface. We have redesigned the WAM Shell to expose the utility Cmdlets that we have written to adjust your WSUS environment.
Get-ApplicationPoolMemory
Set-SchUseStrongCrypto
Get-WsusIISQueueLength
Set-WsusWebExecutionTimeout
Get-WsusIISLoadBalancerCapabilities
Set-WsusIISMaxCachedUpdates
Add-ESDMimetype
Set-ApplicationPoolMemory
Get-WsusIISLimitInterval
Set-WsusIISQueueLength
Get-WsusWebMaxRequestLength
Set-WsusIISLoadBalancerCapabilities
Get-WsusIISMaxInstalledPrerequisites
Reset-ESDMimetype
Get-SchUseStrongCrypto
Set-WsusIISLimitInterval
Get-WsusWebExecutionTimeout
Set-WsusWebMaxRequestLength
Get-WsusIISMaxCachedUpdates
Set-WsusIISMaxInstalledPrerequisites
Remove-ESDMimetype
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