Green WSUS

TL;DR

This paper proposes a green design for Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) that reduces energy consumption by reversing the update check process, minimizing unnecessary network activity and system updates.

Contribution

It introduces a novel WSUS update mechanism that decreases energy use by shifting from periodic checks to server-initiated notifications.

Findings

Reduces energy consumption in system updates

Decreases network traffic during updates

Improves sustainability of IT infrastructure

Abstract

The new era of information and communication technology (ICT) calls for a greater understanding of the environmental impacts of recent technology. With increasing energy cost and growing environmental concerns, green IT is receiving more and more attention. Network and system design play a crucial role in both computing and telecommunication systems. Significant part of this energy cost goes to system update by downloading regularly patches and bug fixes to solve security problems and to assure that the operating system and other systems function properly. This paper describes a new design of Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), system responsible of downloads of the mentioned patches and updates from Microsoft Update website and then distributes them to computers on a network. The general idea behind our proposed design is simple. Instead of the periodical check done by the WSUS servers to ensure update form Microsoft main servers, we rather propose to reverse the scenario in order to reduce energy consumption. In the proposed design, the Microsoft main server(s) sends signal to all WSUS servers to inform them about new updates. Once the signal received, WSUS can contact the main server to start downloading.