Setting up Apple SUS from scratch

[KCH080208]

I am being tasked to setup a SUS server having never ever done so. Where is the best place to look to get started on this? Anybody else ever had to do this with no prior experience? Again any information here would be greatly appreciated.

[bentoms]

@KCH080208, it can be as simple turning on "Software Update" then pointing clients to it.

But, what's the driver for it?

[RobertHammen]

What OS are your clients? What OS are your server? Are you trying to get granular control over what updates are installed, or just trying to save bandwidth?

[jyoung]

We did this last year for our lab environment using Apple's own Update Server component of Server.app, it is pretty straight forward. If you want something like Reposado, you can find that info here - http://git.io/fRlqSQ. Once all the updates are downloaded to the server, just point your clients to them. Here are the directions from Apple on how to do that - http://goo.gl/98xEhu.

We have unmanaged clients and my script looks like this sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL http://su.example.com:8088/index-10.10-10.9-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog

We use Munki to pass out updates to our lab machines and tie in updates for OS X, Firefox, Chrome, etc... Just last week we also turned on the Caching feature of Server.app. That in itself has saved us TONS of bandwidth.

[Chris_Hafner]

@bentoms][/url is quite correct but to be slightly more specific; you will need

1) A mac!
2) A copy of "Server" from the Mac App Store.
3) Then you can launch "server" and check "Software Update Server" form the list of services.

Really, it is generally that simple. Otherwise I'll just re-ask the same question that @bentoms][/url asked. What's the driver and purpose?

P.S. You CANNOT block Yosemite from showing up for your users. There are other ways to block it though if that's what you're trying to do.

[davidacland]

I'd definitely recommend the caching server, really easy to setup and use and can save loads of bandwidth. It just doesn't help with software update controls unfortunately :(

[jescala]

I'll second the caching server if all you want to do is save bandwidth. However, if you want granular control of what updates are allowed, use Reposado. If you want to block Yosemite upgrades, see this thread:

http://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=12157