Updating structure
There are many considerations that go into planning an update structure. When planning, remember that the update manager pushes the files to each share in turn, so the number of shares should be tailored to fit your network bandwidth. Also remember that you shouldn’t put a share on a computer that may go into standby or otherwise be unavailable for long periods of time.
How big is your network?
On a network with fewer than 1,000 computers, you can install a single update manager and create one or more update locations for your client computers to download updates from.
On a network of 1,000 or more computers, you’ll want to design your update structure to take advantage of the best network architecture and the most effective servers. If you use a UNC path for your update location, it should be used by a maximum of 1,000 computers, unless it is on a dedicated file server. If you set up a web location for updating, it can handle somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 computers updating from it.
You could also set up additional update managers to spread the load. They could either update from the primary update manager or directly from Sophos. This kind of scenario could also be used for designing failovers. For detailed instructions about installing an additional update manager, see section 7 of the .
Sophos Enterprise Console advanced startup guideAs a general rule, you should install an additional update manager for each 25,000 client computers on your network.
What computers are on your network?
Your update shares can publish software for all the different supported operating systems.
Consider whether you may want more than one update location for a specific operating system. For example, you might want half your Windows 2000+ operating systems to use one update location and the other half to use another, and use a separate server for Mac OS X, Linux, and UNIX updates.
You can also download software for NetWare and set up a share on any server for these computers to update from. This is described in an appendix to the Sophos Enterprise Console advanced startup guide.
Do you have roaming or remote users connecting to your network?
We’ve tried to illustrate the most common "additional network configuration" scenarios in the rest of this document. Refer to the type of installation that applies to your situation to learn how to install Sophos Endpoint Security and Control on the client computers and how to structure your updating structure to support them.