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Support Tip: WSUS sync in ConfigMgr 2012 fails with HTTP 503 errors

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~ Eric Ellis | Senior Support Escalation Engineer

FIX

Here in product support we’ve seen a recent uptick in issues related to WSUS/ConfigMgr sync problems after the last Patch Tuesday, so I wanted to take a minute to mention the issue here, as well as how you can resolve it in case you happen to see it.

The typical scenario is that a customer is running System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (ConfigMgr 2007) or System Center 2012 Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr 2012 or ConfigMgr 2012 R2) and is unable to synchronize their Software Update Point with their WSUS server. A review of the component status messages for the SMS_WSUS_SYNC_MANAGER component on the primary site server reveals errors related to WSUS synchronization which are similar to the following: 

Message ID: 6703
WSUS Synchronization failed.
Message: The request failed with HTTP status 503: Service Unavailable.
Source: Microsoft.UpdateServices.Administration.AdminProxy.CreateUpdateServer.

When you attempt to open Update Services on the WSUS server you receive the following error:

Error: Connection Error
An error occurred trying to connect to the WSUS server. This error can happen for a number of reasons. Please contact your network administrator if the problem persists. Click the Reset Server Node to connect to the server again.

In addition to the above, attempts to access the URL for the WSUS Administration website (i.e., https://CM12CAS:8530) fails with the error:

HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable

In this situation, the most likely cause is that the WsusPool Application Pool in IIS is in a stopped state, as shown below.

image

Also, the Private Memory Limit (KB) for the Application Pool is probably set to the default value of 1843200 KB.

image

If you encounter this problem, increase the Private Memory Limit to 4GB (4000000 KB) and restart the Application Pool. To increase the Private Memory Limit, select the WsusPool Application Pool and click Advanced Settings under Edit Application Pool. Then set the Private Memory Limit to 4GB (4000000 KB).

After the Application Pool has been restarted, monitor the SMS_WSUS_SYNC_MANAGER component status, wcm.log and wsyncmgr.log for failures. Please note that it may be necessary to increase the Private Memory Limit to 8GB (8000000 KB) or higher depending on the environment.

More Information

When encountering this issue, the WCM.log from the primary site server will contain numerous entries similar to the following:

3/17/2015 11:31:31 AM Attempting connection to WSUS server: serverName, port: 8530, useSSL: False
3/17/2015 11:31:31 AM System.Net.WebException: The request failed with HTTP status 503: Service Unavailable. ~~ at Microsoft.UpdateServices.Administration.AdminProxy.CreateUpdateServer(Object[] args)~~ at Microsoft.SystemsManagementServer.WSUS.WSUSServer.ConnectToWSUSServer(String ServerName, Boolean UseSSL, Int32 PortNumber)
3/17/2015 11:31:31 AM Remote configuration failed on WSUS Server.
3/17/2015 11:31:31 AM STATMSG: ID=6600 SEV=E LEV=M SOURCE="SMS Server" COMP="SMS_WSUS_CONFIGURATION_MANAGER" SYS=serverName.contoso.com SITE=CAS PID=1884 TID=2920 GMTDATE=Tue Mar 17 16:31:31.602 2015 ISTR0="serverName" ISTR1="" ISTR2="" ISTR3="" ISTR4="" ISTR5="" ISTR6="" ISTR7="" ISTR8="" ISTR9="" NUMATTRS=0
3/17/2015 11:31:31 AM Setting new configuration state to 3 (WSUS_CONFIG_FAILED)

Also, the wsyncmgr.log from the primary site server will contain numerous entries similar to the ones below:

3/17/2015 11:28:41 AM Synchronizing WSUS server serverName
3/17/2015 11:28:41 AM STATMSG: ID=6704 SEV=I LEV=M SOURCE="SMS Server" COMP="SMS_WSUS_SYNC_MANAGER" SYS=CM12TeamCAS.cm12Team.LC SITE=CAS PID=1884 TID=2636 GMTDATE=Tue Mar 17 16:28:41.645 2015 ISTR0="" ISTR1="" ISTR2="" ISTR3="" ISTR4="" ISTR5="" ISTR6="" ISTR7="" ISTR8="" ISTR9="" NUMATTRS=0
3/17/2015 11:28:43 AM Sync failed: The request failed with HTTP status 503: Service Unavailable. Source: Microsoft.UpdateServices.Administration.AdminProxy.CreateUpdateServer
3/17/2015 11:28:43 AM STATMSG: ID=6703 SEV=E LEV=M SOURCE="SMS Server" COMP="SMS_WSUS_SYNC_MANAGER" SYS=serverName SITE=CAS PID=1884 TID=2636 GMTDATE=Tue Mar 17 16:28:43.021 2015 ISTR0="Microsoft.UpdateServices.Administration.AdminProxy.CreateUpdateServer" ISTR1= "The request failed with HTTP status 503: Service Unavailable" ISTR2="" ISTR3="" ISTR4="" ISTR5="" ISTR6="" ISTR7="" ISTR8="" ISTR9="" NUMATTRS=0
3/17/2015 11:28:43 AM Sync failed. Will retry in 60 minutes

Eric Ellis | Senior Support Escalation Engineer | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

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Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    I'm seeing this issue, but in my case the Private Memory Limit for the WsusPool is set to 1049119, not the 1843200KB mentioned in the blog post. I've changed it to 4000000 as suggested. After restarting the application pool, I still found that a sync attempt failed. I went into configmgr and restarted the SMS_WSUS_CONFIGURATION_MANAGER, along with SMS_WSUS_SYNC_MANAGER and SMS_WSUS_CONTROL_MANAGER services, and started the sync again. I'll continue monitoring, but so far it looks like it's working.
  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2015
    Thank you....and...this is just a band-aid, right? Thank you for taking the time to recoginze the trend and document it. Meanwhile simply throwing memory at an issue can't be the final fix. Does this mean server RAM needs upgrading because a certain patch is making its way through the system? I don't think so, even though that is what our local service provider seems to be saying. Its sounds like a memory leak or bad (recursive) record link. Any word on when Microsoft might address this?
  • Anonymous
    April 06, 2015
    Thanks Eric, we experienced this issue in the early morning hours after Patch Tuesday in March.
    Nick.
    https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/99622d54-2911-4b47-b204-1201f5c8dc65/sccmwsus-issue-after-importing-march-csa-patch-bundle?forum=configmanagersecurity#7b1586fb-d500-4a26-8f50-1b4a2610127f