Enable third-party updates on the SUP in SCCM | ConfigMgr

This is short post that shows how to enable third-party updates on the SUP in SCCM console. You can deploy third-party software updates using Configuration Manager by enabling the option on SUP.

SUP here stands for Software Update Point whose primary role is to enable software updates compliance assessment and to deploy software updates to clients.

The Third-Party Software Update Catalogs node in the ConfigMgr console allows you to subscribe to third-party catalogs, publish their updates to your software update point (SUP), and then deploy them to clients.

Deploying software updates using SCCM is commonly used practice in most organizations. However, Microsoft added the ability to deploy third-party patches via Configuration Manager. This means you can deploy third-party updates along with the Windows updates.

After you enable third-party updates on the SUP option, you can subscribe to third-party update catalogs in the Configuration Manager console. There are many third-party catalogs that you can use subscribe to and

You can then publish those updates to WSUS and deploy them to clients. The following steps should be run once per hierarchy to enable and set up the feature for use. The steps may need to be rerun if you ever replace the top-level SUP’s WSUS server.

Note that in SCCM version 2006 and earlier, Configuration Manager doesn’t enable this feature by default. Before using it, you must enable the optional feature enable third party updates support on clients.

Enable third-party updates on the SUP in SCCM

Perform the following steps to enable the third-party updates on SCCM SUP.

• In the Configuration Manager console, go to the Administration workspace. Expand Site Configuration, and select the Sites node.
• Select the top-level site in the hierarchy. In the ribbon, select Configure Site Components, and select Software Update Point.
• Switch to the Third-Party Updates tab and select the option Enable third-party software updates.

After you enable the SUP third-party updates, you’ll need to decide if you want Configuration Manager to automatically manage the third-party WSUS signing certificate using a self-signed certificate, or if you need to manually configure the certificate.

The convenient option is let Configuration Manager manage the WSUS signing certificate. Choose the desired option and click Apply and OK.