Deprecation of WSUS driver synchronization

Seconding Kurt_415's question, your statement that _importing_ drivers into WSUS will no longer work is concerning.

Because absolutely, I don't think a great number or orgs sync the entirety of the driver category. That basically guarantees that WSUS will implode under the weight of its own tech debt. However, it's important that people be able to use that mechanism for driver deployment where necessary.

That said, I question the validity of whatever survey you did. I'm a MVP, part of the CCP program, and spent most of my career working with MS update technology, and this is the first I'm hearing about such a survey. WSUS is used by countless small orgs that form a long-tail of orgs run by single person IT departments that don't have time to participate in any kind of social media. So unless you did some unprecedented push to reach out to 10s or 100s of thousands of orgs that you hither-to-fore have not communicated with then your survey is not representative of the actual user base.

Will this also affect Third-party Software Update catalog like HP firmware, drivers,...?

Right, JS-DE basically confirmed that there was no meaningful outreach plan. A blog, a tweet, and we could have ensured thousands, if not tens of thousands of people were aware. I'd love to know how many actual responses they got but barring the actual number, what's the ratio between survey responses and the number of daily catalog syncs?

Even more concerning to me, the survey wasn't about 'should we do this' but apparently 'how much pain are we going to cause'. People generally do not need to sync every driver into WSUS at the category level. However, they absolutely need the ability to import drivers into WSUS on an as-needed basis: either directly from the global update catalog or via an 3rd party update catalog via ConfigMgr.

Paul_Reed Would the ability of importing drivers using the same method currently in use for other updates using the UpdateID be avaialble after the deprecation? The local publishing method requires more configuration and possibly infrastructure and since the Drivers will still be available in the catalog and therefore still have an UpdateID, it would be much easier to allow the importing by UpdateID.

Hmmm... Help smooth WSUS driver sync deprecation | Windows servicing discussion (microsoft.com)

And linked to a page with 813 views, nevermind responses. BryanDam the survey was linked in our MVP CCP Oct-10-17 email. I saw it, and I'm not sure but I think I responded, but still, this doesn't seem like a very inclusive survey representing the SMB community. Most are not on socials, most don't have time to go out and find these surveys and answer them.

I second the ability of importing into WSUS from the catalog (and from PowerShell with Import-WsusUpdate).

On a Brand new installation of WSUS with Just Windows 10, Win10 1903 and later/11 products selected with their associated Servicing Drivers and Upgrade and Servicing Drivers, you get ~392,000 driver updates. WAM can deal with these easily, yes, another 3rd party tool (ours), but it does put strain on the system initially as it flows in.

Hi everyone, 

as I just got aware about this survey, I spread the word about this blogpost and the survey by Paul_Reed 

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7231077545293590528/

+ patchmanagement.org. Over there this change has been brought up, but nothing about the survey yet.

Paul, may I kindly ask for an update of your OP including your survey into the last section "What do you need to prepare"?

It is quite usual blogposts on techcommunity receiving updates post publishing.

Thank you for your questions and feedback on this important topic.  Drivers are essential components of any computer system, and keeping them updated is very vital.  First, for customers who use SCCM the ability to import from third-party driver catalogs will continue to be supported.  For more information on this please see Enable third-party updates - Configuration Manager | Microsoft Learn.

Drivers will still be available for download via the Microsoft Update catalog.  You can download the driver, then create a package that can be used for Local publishing in WSUS.  Please see Local Publishing | Microsoft Learn for more information.  

Second that Adam.

Paul_Reed no offence, but local publishing is not very nice.

We might want to consider that WSUS is not only relevant for ConfigMgr. Which I personally believe is one or even the only reason WSUS is not sunset or declared deprecated with its general state in terms of UX and limitations and bare development investments since 2012.

Many SMB / SMC customers using WSUS and while Driver and FW via WSUS never gave any great experience for these customers in particular, local publishing would not be welcomed due lack of tools, outside the named for corps.

We have to consider that there is a 500+ seats limit to license corporate solutions via Enterprise Agreement like Microsoft Configuration Manager with System Center Updates Publisher. The majority number of companies do not have access to this.