NetIQ Secure Configuration Manager 6.1 Windows Agent Release Notes

If you want to install or upgrade an agent on a local computer, use the NetIQSecurityAgentForWindows.msi setup program included in the installation kit.

If you want to install or upgrade the agent on remote computers, use the Deployment wizard in the Secure Configuration Manager console. Before using the remote deployment feature, you must locally install or upgrade at least one agent in each domain. Secure Configuration Manager uses this first upgraded agent as a Deployment Agent for the domain. After you upgrade an agent, Secure Configuration Manager can automatically assign it as a Deployment Agent. For more information about deployment and Deployment Agents, see the NetIQ Secure Configuration Manager Windows Agent Installation and Configuration Guide and the NetIQ Secure Configuration Manager User Guide.

The Secure Configuration Manager 6.1 setup program automatically adds a Windows agent to the Core Services computer. If a Windows agent already exists on the computer, the setup program upgrades the agent it. Secure Configuration Manager also makes this agent the default Deployment Agent for the computer's domain.

Before using the Deployment feature in the console to upgrade older agents, you might need to specify a fully qualified host name (FQHN) for the agent computer. Secure Configuration Manager needs to know in which domain each agent resides so that Core Services can assign a Deployment Agent to use for deploying version 6.1 to the agents.

During installation and deployment, the installation program makes the following changes on the target computer:

If you want to use an upgraded agent as a Deployment Agent, you might need to modify the run-as account for the NetIQ Security Agent for Windows service on that agent's computer. The service account for Deployment Agents must have the credentials to deploy to remote computers. For example, specify a domain administrator account. When you upgrade a Windows agent, the setup program persists the agent settings, including baselines and registry key settings.

If you upgrade an agent that communicates with Core Services on a port other than the default port, you must manually re-register the upgraded agent. When the upgraded agent registers with Secure Configuration Manager Core Services, the default communication port changes from 1626 to 1627.

You can upgrade a Windows agent that has the NetIQ Secure Configuration Manager Module for SCAP (SCAP module) installed on the agent computer.

If you want to re-deploy an agent that has already been successfully deployed to a remote computer, you must uninstall the agent first. For example, you might want to change the credentials of the Windows agent service or resolve issues with the agent. The Deployment wizard does not change the settings for a previously installed agent, even though you modify the settings as part of the deployment process. The Windows agent setup program prevents you from installing an agent when the same version already exists on the computer, but the Deployment wizard does not.