System Center Update Publisher 2011 Troubleshoot Series 3: Publish fail when SCUP 2011 is remote and WSUS is using UNC as Content Folder

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We saw several reports that SCUP publishing fail under this configuration: SCUP 2011 is installed on a remote machine from WSUS and WSUS is installed to use an UNC path as Content Folder.

There’re actually two problems when WSUS is using UNC path as Content Folder.

1. The UNC Content Folder needs to be 2 levels deep.

That is you’ll need to set the UNC Content Folder as this: \\<remoteserver>\WSUSContentFolder.

If you only set the UNC Content Folder to be one level deep like: \\<remoteserver>

You will meet error when trying to publish even from a local SCUP

Publish: A fatal error occurred during publishing :Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

2. When WSUS is using UNC path as Content Folder, you have to use SCUP locally.

Otherwise, you’ll meet error:

Publish: :Exception occurred during publishing: Unable to find database configuration value.               

There is no workaround for this so far. You need either run SCUP locally on the WSUS server or use a local folder as the WSUS Content Folder. You can use WSUS utility tool wsusutil.exe to move the content folder location.