MAU - Automatically Download and Install - bandwidth

@May I'd read the description as it caching the standalone updates, but I can't speak from experience. You might find this thread more informative: Microsoft MAU ManifestServer and Caching Server

I just set up the microsoft caching server and it works great. Saved us a ton of external traffic. Easiest way though was to push the preference for connecting the client to the server and also set the client to auto download the updates. My pie graphs are finally going green!

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

Thanks @StoneMagnet @gshackney

Gabe, are you also using a Manifest server to control which updates are allowed to go out ?,
i'm just getting my head around how that works

Not at this time. I'm more just having the server auto download the most current microsoft updates (which it does automatically) and then when the clients check in they download the individual updates in the background. I didn't want to dedicate too much time to this, but at least now we can stay current.

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

@gshackney I've recently configured a MAU Caching server as well. I was wondering if there is a way to control the check in time for updates?

In the controls you can set how often it checks for updates. Ours is set to 60 minutes. I guess you could not have it check and run the check manually whenever new updates came out.

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

@gshackney Which controls are you referring to? In the Microsoft AutoUpdate application itself? I do not see any options to configure check in time. I have it set to Automatically download and install.

This is a setting on the Microsoft caching server script. Since if you don't download the update packages on the server then the clients won't get the updates. The nice part is the clients grab the updates in the background on the once the auto updater determines new updates are available.

I can post the full steps I did to setup the Microsoft caching server next week if anyone needs more info. Just let me know.

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

@gshackney Ok - I think we are talking about two different things.

The amount of time the MAU Server waits to check into Microsoft for new updates is 1 thing.

I'm referring to a client computer who checks into my local MAU Server - what is the default time a client machine will randomly check into my local server to see if any new updates are available and is that configurable?

No. As far as I can tell you cannot configure the client check in times.

Again though that won't matter if there are no new updates for it to see on the server side. So in essence you can control the clients by controlling the server if you only serve updates when you tell the Mau.

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

Alright - thank you

@pbowden with Microsoft recently commented about the efforts they're going through to reduce the size of Office 2016 for Mac updates on the MacAdmins Slack team. A MAU caching server sounds like it's going to be a great way to go.

For the last few Insider Fast builds (Insider Fast is released weekly and new features may not appear in production releases for weeks or months at a time), they've released single delta updates for the entire suite rather than individual app updates. While I don't recall the size of the last update, I don't believe it was more than a few hundred MBs. For comparison, Office 2011 delta updates are about 100 MB.

However, according to Paul just yesterday:

"Delta updates are going to keep getting better and smaller. For example, we have a working binary delta update for the suite that upgrades 15.33.17040900 to 15.34.17050300 with just a 67MB download. Not quite ready to ship it yet, but we're close."

The MAU caching server will support the same deltas.

@Chuey I think the setting that you're looking for is 'UpdateCheckFrequency' which is an int specified in minutes. By default MAU checks for updates every 720 mins (12 hours). For example, to set the frequency to every hour, use "defaults write com.microsoft.autoupdate2 UpdateCheckFrequency -int 60"

Paul Bowden
Office for Mac Engineering

@pbowden Great - thanks so much for this!

@pbowden Hey Paul, After updating to MAU 3.9.1 and also using the caching service, I have started getting the following error:
It sees the new updates but for some reason is not able to grab the packages to install. Is there a log file I can view to see what is really happening?
Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

Hi Gabe,

Sorry for the slow response. Are you still seeing this error on the client? If so, the following should help:

1. Take a look at /Library/Log/Microsoft/autoupdate.log and see if it provides any clues as to what might be happening.
   MAU defaults to logging at the <info> level, and sometimes doesn't provide enough verbosity, so if you want to see more, run:

2. defaults write com.microsoft.autoupdate2 ExtendedLogging -bool TRUE
   Run the scenario again until you see the error message, and then take another look at the log file

If you're still having problems, let me know and I'll try and repro.

Thanks,

Paul Bowden
Office for Mac Engineering
Redmond, WA

I only have a few clients having this, where most others are not seeing an issue and are grabbing the updates just fine from the caching server, but I don't see a common connection as of yet. So here is the error that I see in the logs:
2017-05-18 13:10:19 [Microsoft AutoUpdate] <Debug> Failed to download http://MyCachingServerIP/Word_15.34.17041901_to_15.34.17051500_Delta.pkg because 'Error Domain=com.microsoft.autoupdate Code=-1100 "(null)"'

I'm wondering if a client may have tried to select the Office Insider program (which I don't have currently caching), and it got confused?
Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

Hi Gabe

I am getting the same Code=-1100 error. Have you been able to find what caused it?

Thanks
K