Some suggestions to migrate agent in 300 servers?

[Tania Moreno]

Hello,

 

I need to migrate the Harvest agent in about 300 servers, all of them belong to production environment. Servers have different business services and owners.

 

Any suggestion in how to do this?

 

Regards,

 

 

Tania Moreno

[Melinda Skelton]

Hello Tania,

 

Depending on the type of operating system(s) for the agent machines, and whether they had a previous version of Harvest Agent installed, you can create an installation bundle containing a script that will unzip an archive file, stop the agent process if it is running, uninstall the previous version (if needed) and then execute a silent install of the necessary components.  The one challenge is that in some environments, Harvest is not always installed to the same folder with the same userid and permissions from one agent machine to the next.  You will need to check each machine to verify this and adjust your script accordingly.  Information about silently installing the various components is found in the Implementation Guide.

 

Let me know if this is what you needed.

[Tania Moreno]

Hi Melinda,

 

Thanks for your message. I understand that your instructions are for Unix/Linux/AIX.

 

But ...    For Windows, may I replace the agent with unzip the archive file??

 

Regards!

 

Tania Moreno

[Melinda Skelton]

On Windows you could create an install package that stops the agent service if it's running, then perform the install or upgrade "silently".  Your system administrators probably have a preferred method to push software updates to computers in the organization so you should consult with them about their preferred way to push the agent upgrade out.  On the SCM Installation DVD image there is a "upgrade_win32" folder and a "upgrade_win64" folder containing the upgrade wizard program. In chapter 9 of the Implementation Guide there's a section titled "Run the Upgrade Wizard in Unattended (Silent)Mode Using a Response File".  This should guide you through how to set up your install script.

 

Let me know if this is what you needed.

[RicardoBernardino]

Hello.

 

In a customer of ours, we did something similar to what MelindaS is suggesting.

We provided the HelpDesk team the MSI file and its appropriate parameters for the client (but the same could be applied to the agent) and they pushed it to all the machines at once.

The tricky part may be the

Servers have different business services and owners

part, but it it will depend on whether the team responsible for the (push) installation has access/permissions to perform the upgrade on all the machines.

 

On other situation, we upgraded only 2 machines from each Unix distribution (namely Linux, Unix and HP-UX), so the (total) automation effort was not worth it.

 

In summary, it will depend on having access to all the machines and being able to prepare a script or package to push/execute on each machine or group of machines.

 

Best regards,

Ricardo Bernardino

[Tania Moreno]

Thanks to Melinda and Ricardo. Their suggestions are fine to apply.

 

Best regards!

 

 

Tania