Microsoft caused and fixed a WSUS Synchronization issue that affected systems worldwide

Reports about problems with WSUS Sync started to appear shortly after Microsoft released security updates for Windows systems earlier this week. Users flocked to sites like Reddit to vent their frustration and potentially find a solution for the issue.

Windows Server Update Services Synchronization enables centralized management of Microsoft updates. It gives system administrators control over update deployment to Windows devices. In other words, it is an essential tool for keeping Windows devices up to date and installing the latest security updates on them.

The default configuration has WSUS sync with the Microsoft Update server once a day. It downloads metadata from the server so that the latest available updates and changes are reflected on the administrator's side.

The error log may show errors such as "A connection attempt failed" or "The operation has timed out" on affected systems. On sites like Reddit, administrators are asking questions like "Is anyone having synchronization issues with their WSUS server?".

Microsoft has not publicly acknowledged the issue at this point, but users who openened a ticket with Microsoft received responses like the following one:

We would like to inform you that we are currently investigating a synchronization issue affecting WSUS. Our internal teams have observed similar behavior across multiple environments, and we are actively working to find a resolution.

 

While the exact cause is still under investigation, we are collaborating closely with our engineering teams to determine a resolution path.

It claims that Microsoft is investigating the issue and working on an update that should resolve it. According to the same message, administrators may restore the functionality in the meantime by unchecking the "Updates" classification. The issue seems to be related to .NET Framework 3.5 related updates that were published this month with the "Updates" classification.

Shortly thereafter, Microsoft confirmed that it resolved the issue. System administrators may access the information on the Microsoft Release Health website.

Microsoft confirms that defective metadata caused WSUS servers to run a full synchronization all over the world, which put the servers under a lot of stress. This caused the servers to become unresponsive, which explains the timeout errors that some users received.

Microsoft fixed the issue by expiring the update that caused the issue. Synchronization should be back to normal now.

Source

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