Specifications

• You retain all your policies and client tasks — This means you don't have to rebuild them and

could save you time.

• You retain your directory structure — If you have invested a lot time building this structure an

in-place upgrade may be a good idea.

• You don't have to transfer any McAfee agents to a new server — Since nothing changes with

an in-place upgrade the upgrade is transparent to all your agents.

Cons of doing an in-place upgrade

The disadvantages of an in-place McAfee ePO server upgrade include:

• If your McAfee ePO server has been used for a long time do not transfer certain issues to the new

upgrade. For example, if you ran extensive SQL scripts or altered your database in anyway outside

of the normal operating procedures you might want start with a clean installation.

• Older policies might not still apply to your existing environment. Do not copy those policies during

your in-place upgrade.

Assess your environments and policies periodically to confirm they still

apply to your environment.

In-place upgrade tips

To make sure your in-place upgrade is successful:

• Back up your infrastructure. This includes your SQL database and any agent keys. See

KnowledgeBase article KB66616 for detailed backup procedures.

• Make any hardware changes or remove any repositories that you want to decommission.

• Make sure your hardware and bandwidth meet the minimum requirements before upgrading.

• Confirm you have the required software, such as the newer version of the McAfee Agent. Remove

any unsupported software. For example, Rogue System Detection or System Compliance Profiler.

• Go through your users on the McAfee ePO server and remove any unneeded accounts.

• Clean out all unused policies.

• Remove any old client tasks you no longer use. For example, old deployment tasks or old patch

installation tasks. If the task is not in use remove it.

• Validate your tree and remove any agents that have not communicated with the ePO server in 14

days. In addition, remove any shell machines that were imported into ePO from Active Directory.

Shells are placeholders in the tree and do not actually have an ePO

agent installed.

• Purge events that are not needed. Try to delete any events older than 60 days.

• Backup, reindex, and check your disk space on the SQL Server. Confirm you have plenty of disk

space for the SQL database.

• Remove old versions of software that you are not using. For example, patches for older versions of

products that are no longer used.

Replicate those patches to your distributed repositories prior to upgrading.

Installation and upgrade of ePolicy Orchestrator software

Upgrade the software

McAfee

ePolicy Orchestrator

4.0 and 4.5 Best Practices Guide