Update KACE Agent from 10.x to 12.x
Hello fellow ninja!
Please allow me to share some background. Our SMA was on v10.x in October 2022 and we were advised by support to upgrade the appliance. The upgrade to 12.1 was completed in December. However, we discovered that the SDA task to install the SMA agent was not updated and therefore we have a just over 200 machine with 10.x agent that are not automatically updating themselves. The KACE installation GPO does not upgrade the agents either.
This is where I need the help! l am looking for ideas on how to on-board these machines other than manually installing it on each machine.
Answers (3)
You could script it and host the script and agent together in an accessible network location but triggering that script to run without Kace is where I am getting stuck. I think investigating why the GPO won't update the agents may be the best course of action. Did you use the GPO provisioning tool when creating the GPO? Using the GPO Provisioning Tool for Agent Deployment (4218876) (quest.com) You will still need to step into a version that it is upgradable to, but if you get it to deploy say 11 then the K1 should be able to get them from 11 to 12 for you.
Thanks for the feedback thus far everyone!
We're gonna try Mashby1's idea. Currently we have a GPO that was configured to the deploy the 12.x agent, so we are going to reconfigure the GPO, using the GPO provisioning tool to install the 11.x agent and allow the agents to update themselves.
However, I have a question about the behaviour of the GPO. Will the GPO force install 11.x agents on machines that have the 12.x agents?
First just checking you know you cannot step the agent from 10.x to 12.x in one jump?
So if you are on a 10.1 agent you need to run the update agent function to 10.2, then run it to 11, 11.1, 11.2 etc until you get the latest version installed.
If that won't work for you then you will probably need to create a GPO to run the uninstall agent command and then create a second one to install the latest version. If you want to contact us we have a tried and tested process that covers that off and we can walk you through it
Comments:
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this is not correct. It is fully supported to update agents from Version -2 to a current version, which means: 10.0 agents can be updated to 10.2 without the step to 10.1, 10.2 can go to 11.1 directly etc.
Usually also bigger steps can be done automaticly but supported is always -2.
The -1 update is valid for the appliance itself only.
an option can be: run a GPO to uninstall the agents and install the latest one, since now some agents dont update. - Nico_K 1 year ago-
Not speaking from experience but according to KACE documentation there are minimum versions you can update to/from: https://support.quest.com/kb/4284819/minimum-agent-version-requirements-for-upgrades
That document, which appears to be kept up to date says 10 can go to 11 not 12. - Mashby1 1 year ago