How to continually upgrade Windows 10

There are three main ways to upgrade and maintain a Windows 10 environment. The different approaches have all their pro and cons which are described. If one of the ways seems to fit you better that the other at the moment you should chose that way and revise your decision periodically. You can move between the different methods over time to suit your organizations requirements at any given time.

In place upgrade using WSUS

This is the way to spend the least amount of time on the administration side, but there is some lack of control in deployment and there may be some heavy impact on local network. If this is your way you only have to enable feature upgrades in WSUS. You should also implement some kind of bandwidth limitation like LEDBAT or branch cache for updates, so the network load is controlled.

Pro

• Simple to configure
• Less administration time

Con

• Less control on deployment
• Heavy impact on network load
• Image must be maintained separate

In place upgrade using upKeeper update functionality

This is the way to control of the distribution of your updates and still use WSUS in combination with upKeeper. Best of two worlds but results in more administration and no updated image fore distribution to new computer clients. Feature upgrades are fetched from WSUS and packaged in upKeeper. Update packages is distributed like regular applications and you can manage distribution to control network load and distribution in your organisation so normal business is not disrupted.

Pro

• Control of deployment
• Controlled impact on network load

Cons

• Some administration time
• Image must be maintained separate

Reinstall using upKeeper platform function

This is the way which gives you the most control to update and install new computers. This way force you to automate your entire environment and give you full automation. If you choose this path you have to spend time to create updated images (can be automated) and fully automated applications but in return you gain a totally automated environment where you can replace and reinstall computers without hesitate. Distribution of new images can made during off hours and will be ready to use whenever you need to reinstall any computer. When reinstallation is made from the local image and big applications are cached the network load will be hold to a minimum.

Pro

• Control of deployment
• Controlled impact on network load
• Deployment image is always up to date

Cons

• Time spent to create image

Hope this make your decision for a good upgrade strategy easier. Happy deployment!