Many admins prefer to use a command line interface (CLI) to perform the management of servers and services. If you know the commands it can be much faster than using a GUI. WSUS is one of those servers that can be managed via a command line.

The tool used to manage a WSUS server via the command line is WSUSUtil.exe and it can perform a number of tasks with the following switches.

• /export - exports the metadata allowing for backup of the WSUS server config
• /import - imports the metadata that you exported with /export when restoring a WSUS server
• /movecontent - this switch is used to move the update files to a different hard drive or partition.
• /migratesus - you can use this switch to migrate your approvals from your old SUS server
• /deleteuneededrevisions - if your MSDE database is nearing its capacity you can use this to remove older revisions of updates
• /listinactiveapprovals - will list all approvals that are no longer active. Updates become inactive when you change a setting, perhaps you no longer have any Windows 2000 clients, or any Outlook XP clients or changes were made to the languages supported.
• /removeinactiveapprovals - removes those listed above
• /reset - this is the most handy switch in my experience. When an update file becomes corrupt this will force the update to be re-downloaded.

For more information see:

Managing WSUS from the Command Line