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I have just installed wsus role in a windows 2016 server. It was my understanding that wsus would have been contacted by all the computers/servers in the network and would have downloaded the files that they need. In less than a day wsus is consuming all the disk space 100GB. In this network there are windows servers from 2008 to 2016. windows 10 from the first one to the release 1903 and microsoft office from 2010 to 365. Is it possible that wsus is downloading unnecessary updates? How does wsus decide to download updates?

Malkavian
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    100GB is not much for *5 generations* of Windows Server, Win10 and multiple Office editions. You also have to define _what_ types of updates WSUS will download (security, feature, upgrade, tools, drivers, etc.) – Lenniey Jul 10 '19 at 12:10

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WSUS downloads updates once they are approved, either automatically via an Automatic Approval rule or manually. You cannot configure WSUS to automatically download only those updates that the clients report as needed, if you want to do that you have to approve updates manually. (I should note that this is not particularly difficult to do and would take only a few minutes each month.)

From your description, you have probably enabled the Default Automatic Approval Rule, which approves all Critical Updates and all Security Updates.

Problem #1: this will approve and download all the superseded updates, e.g., you're getting up to four years worth of cumulative updates for each and every version of Windows 10. You will need to go in and decline the superseded updates. More details here. You will need to do this every month or so if you want to minimize the amount of disk space used.

Problem #2: if you have selected "All Products" under Products and Classifications, you will be approving and downloading updates for all operating systems and other products, not just the ones you need. Some possible strategies for dealing with this are also discussed in the answer already linked.

That said, I only approved updates that are needed, and decline them (which deletes them from the disk) once they are superseded, and my WSUS server still currently has about 105GB of content - that includes updates for Windows 7 and Windows 8 which you won't need, but nonetheless I think you will find a 100GB disk to be rather tight.

Harry Johnston
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