Restart required after agent update?

[adminsi]

Hi

I just upgraded to Backupexec 2014 service pack 1

As after each upgrade, it's adviced to upgrade remote agents.

As after each upgrade, it's required to restart servers...

Is this really mandatory? No way to just restart remote agent service on remote server?

Restarting a server is nothing, but restarting up to 50 or 60 servers take some time. And this should most of times be done during night.

It really becomes time consuming to take a few hours each time a hotfix is released

No way to solve this Symantec guys?

Would be really happy ;)

[CraigV · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Yes ideally you need to restart your servers so that it effects the necessary changes. if you don't the RAWS agent might not start up, or you might not get successful backups.

However, if you open up your registry and make a backup of it first, do a search for a key called PatchReboot (should be under HKEY_LOCALMACHINE\SOFTWARE\SYMANTEC) and delete it. Then start up the RAWS service and your backups can run.

Bear in mind this is a temporary fix, and you need to restart the server anyway. It just buys a bit of time.

Thanks!

[pkh]

When you update a software, there may be processes holding on to some modules, preventing them from being updated. The only way to free these held modules is to reboot the machine.

[VJware]

Typically, we recommend a reboot of the BE media server when a hotfix/service pack is installed, though a reboot of the remote systems is not mandatory.

A restart of the remote agent service on these remote machines should be just fine. (Unless, due to various reasons such as third-party component updates, locked processes, a reboot is required.)

Lastly, if you look the RAWS update options from the console, the first few options do NOT reboot the remote server (Conversely meaning the reboot is not mandatory for remote server updates). Only the last option does and it states:- "Restart the computer automatically after installing the updates to the Symantec Backup Exec Agent for Windows when a restart is required"