Installing Symantec Management Agent and Plug-ins
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Installing Symantec Management Agent and Plug-ins

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Article ID: 393207

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Updated On:

Products

IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

You are setting up a new environment to be managed by a new Symantec Management Platform (SMP or NS) Server and you need to install the Symantec Management Agent (SMA or Altiris agent) and its plug-ins on multiple client machines and/or servers.

Environment

ITMS 8.7.x

Resolution

This article is based on more recent installation improvements done with our ITMS 8.7, 8.7.1, 8.7.2 and 8.7.3 releases.

From previous practices, refer to Installing the Symantec Management Agent on Windows Computers

Starting with ITMS 8.7 Release (see Release Notes), you can use the new "Agent Plugins Rollut" tab under the "Agent Install" page and accomplish the following:

  1. Define the default set of plug-ins to install on a client with a Symantec Management Agent without waiting of a specific plug-in installation policy to appear on a client. For more information, see Configuring a Default Set of Plug-Ins to Install.
  2. Upgrade all installed plug-ins as part of the Symantec Management Agent upgrade process. See section 3 of the Configuring the Symantec Management Agent Upgrade and Uninstall Policies topic
  3. Standardize the set of plug-ins installed on clients with a unified policy. There is a new Unified Windows Agent Plug-in Rollout Policy that can help you to standardize the default set of plug-ins installed on clients. For more information, see the Using the Unified Windows Agent Plug-in Rollout Policy topic.

With our ITMS 8.7.3 Release (See Release Notes), you can install the Symantec Management Agent (SMA), plug-ins, and the CEM policy as quickly as possible. No longer is it necessary to wait for the resource membership update process to run on the Notification Server and plug-in packages to be downloaded from package servers before plug-ins get installed. 

As mentioned under Configuring a Default Set of Plug-Ins to Install, you can use the new checkbox at the bottom labelled "Include selected plugins file data in the agent installation package", which gives you the ability to generate agent installation packages containing the selected plugins. When this option is not enabled, the selected plugins will be downloaded from the server and then installed (Note: This new option is not used with Push install).


By selecting that mentioned setting, it forces the agent installation package (called AeXNSCHTTP.exe and/or AeXHTTPS.exe depending if you use both protocols or just one of them) under "...\Program Files\Altiris\Notification Server\NSCap\bin\Win32\X86" to be recreated and display this message:

Refreshing pull installation package(s). This may take a few minutes. Please wait.

Additional Information

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