Install new EPO server and move clients

[timarnold]

Am currently running EPO 3.6.1 and want to change to 4. I need to setup a new install of EPO and then get all of my clients to talk to the server. What I dont want to do is push the EPO client out to the users again. (5000 of them)
Is there a way of easily getting the machines to talk to the new server? Would setting the server with the same name and ip address and turning the old one off work????

Thanks

 

[CingularEPO]

I had the same problem. The answer to your question is yes this will work but I used a product that redirected traffic from the old epo server to the new epo server.

http://www.networkactiv.com/

is the website. It works very well. Mcafee even wrote a white paper about it. I submitted a FMR with Mcafee and it will be included in the new version of Epo 4.5 that will resolve this issue. It will be released Q2'09.

 

[timarnold]

CingularEPO

Thanks for the info.
Could you expand on what you did?
Did you install a new server (with a different IP and Name) and put EPO 4 on it and then use this program to redirect requests from the old server to the new?

Wouldnt just putting extries in DNS / WINS do the same as this software?

Thanks

 

[Chippokes]

We are in the process of converting a number of our servers to virtual using Microsoft's Hyper-V and we just completed the process on our EPO 361 server. We ran the Physical to Virtual task from the Hyper-V console which created a virtual server guest machine. We then shutdown the physical server and started the virtual guest server. All the epo agents are reporting in fine and the scheduled deployment tasks work great.

This sort of answers your question concerning creating the new server and reusing the existing epo server host name and IP address. That is essentially what we did with Hyper-V. No agent pushes were involved. We just had to make sure we did not start the virtual server with the physical server still up a running on the network.

We will be upgrading to 4.0 in the next couple of days on the same virtual server.

 

[timarnold]

I suppose it is a little bit like what I am trying to achieve. The real question I am asking is. If I setup a new server with the same name and IP address but DIFFERENT VERSION OF EPO (V4).

What I cant find out is, will the clients talk to the new server with new epo version?

I agree that setting up a new server with same name ip and epo version would work.

any ideas.

 

[timarnold]

Just read something else as well.. Does EPO 4 have a new version of the agent?

 

[Chippokes]

EPO 4.0 works with the current 3.6 version which is 3.6.0.574. I have tried the new 4.0 agent and did not have much success even though it is compatible with EPO 3.6, 3.61 and 4.0 according to the documentation. Rolled back to the 3.6.0.574 version.

Upgrading to EPO 4.0 tomorrow morning after running in a test environment.

 

[timarnold]

OK.
Here's what I am going to do.

My current EPO server 3.6.1 is a VM machine.
I am going to turn this off.

I am then going to provision a new Windows 2003 server.
Use the same name and IP address as old server.
Install new version of EPO.

I will then set the EPO software to sync with AD.
And from the answers above the clients should just start communicating with the new server.

(I will install all the software that was on the old server, patces, av clients and policies)

any comments? From the answers above this seems to be the best way to do it?

 

[mehaul]

I have the same problem thanks for the info

http://www.LoseMyStomach.com

 

[sshera]

Hi guys,
I´m in a similar situation. My ePO server is a phisical one, 3.6.1.220 and I want to finish working on a ePO 4.0 virtual one. In my test environment I´m running ePO Server 4.0 patch3 and McAfeeAgent 4.0 patch1, everything OK.
I´m planning to convert my ePO 3.6.1 in a virtual one (P2V), and upgrade it to ePO 4.0. If everything goes well (before upgrading agents), that's all, if not, shutting down the virtual one and starting the physical one, I would go back to the previous sitituation.
Do any of you see any problem to this strategy?

Thanks.

 

[CingularEPO]

All of you are correct with the migration steps that you have listed. They all will work. In my situation, I couldnt keep the same name and Ip address of the old server so I had to use the software to redirect the traffic to the new server. Once the machines connected into the new server, they received a new sitelist from the new server and then they became a client of the new server. Prior to the migration, I too did a AD sync that allowed the machines to report to the correct location inside of AD. My migration was also from 3.61 to epo 4 but I had the same agent versions in both server. EPO 4 does come with a newer version of the epo agent but I replaced it with the one I had. I hope this helps. Sorry for the delay but I dont check this but once a week. Good Luck.

 

[Chippokes]

sshera, what virtual environment are you running, VMWare or Microsoft Hyper-V? I ran P2V and moved my EPO 3.6.1 to a virtual guest on a Hyper-V host server. When I tried to install EPO 4.0 patch 3, the install process failed.

I had the same issue in my testing environment installing patch 2 which is running on a MS Virtual Server 2005 host. The work around was to use the SQL SA account to access the database at the

https://localhost:8443/core/config

page. Once patch 2 was installed, we reset the database account to our standard account.

Tried the same process on EPO 4.0 to install patch 3 and it failed. I opened a service request with McAfee gold support and was told the solution was that EPO 4.0 is not support in a Hyper-V virtual environment. The next version of EPO will.

Still working on a solution.

 

[sshera]

Hi Chippokes,
In my test environment I´m running Virtual Server 2005, and I upgraded to ePO 4.0 patch 3 without problems, previously changing SQL SA account password (without special characters).
In production, I have both Hyper-V and Virtual Server 2005, and I´ll wait for ePO 4.5 to run on Hyper-V. I´m not sure yet if I´ll run p2v on Virtual Server 2005 or keep running on physical server till then.