Configuring WSUS to inventory clients

In addition to scanning and reporting on client updates, Windows Server Update Services can also report on the hardware and software inventory included in a system. While this won't provide a complete asset inventory of your environment, it does provide up-to-date information of your systems.

The Windows update client uses multiple methods (WMI queries, registry keys, file versions) to scan for applicable updates. Once scanned, the results are reported to the update server for reporting purposes.

The Windows update server includes a set of additional WMI queries that can be enabled to report on the hardware and software on client computers. This information is scanned by the client and reported back to the server. There are no built-in reports to display this information, but once enabled, we can query the database directly.

Getting ready

In this recipe we will be using a WSUS server that is configured with one or more clients.

How to do it...

Perform the...