SCUP Connection Error: Fixing a Failed Update Server Connection

Part of our SCCM and ConfigMgr guides: every related guide in one place.

SCUP: “Failed to Connect to the Update Server” Error

If you’re setting up System Center Updates Publisher (SCUP) against a WSUS server and get an error along the lines of “Failed to connect to the update server. Request for principal permission failed” when trying to connect or publish, this is almost always a permissions/configuration issue between SCUP and WSUS rather than a network connectivity problem — the connection itself is reaching the server fine, it’s being rejected at the authorisation stage.

Things to check, roughly in order of how often they turn out to be the cause:

• Confirm the account running SCUP has local administrator rights on the WSUS server itself, not just on the SCUP machine.
• If SCUP and WSUS are on separate machines, double-check the WSUS server’s IIS configuration allows the connection — the WSUS API website in IIS needs to be reachable and not blocked by an intermediate firewall.
• Verify the WSUS server name and port configured inside SCUP’s options exactly match how WSUS is actually configured, including the SSL port if WSUS is set up for HTTPS, since a mismatched port is a common cause of exactly this error.
• Restart the WSUS service (and IIS) after any changes, then retry the SCUP connection.

Once the connection succeeds, it’s worth doing a small test publish of a single, low-risk update rather than your full catalog, just to confirm the whole SCUP-to-WSUS-to-ConfigMgr chain is working end to end before you rely on it for real.

Worth Knowing If You’re Still on SCUP (Updated for 2026)

SCUP itself has been in unsupported “hospice care” status since 31 January 2024, as already flagged elsewhere on this site. Microsoft’s recommended path for third-party update catalogs today is Configuration Manager’s own in-console third-party catalog subscriptions rather than a SCUP-signed WSUS feed. The connection steps above are still accurate if you’re keeping an existing SCUP setup running, but for a new deployment, use ConfigMgr’s native third-party catalog instead of standing up SCUP.

Resources

• WSUS