UEM 9.0 to 9.2 Upgrade

[atoerper]

Can you run the 9.0 agent with the 9.2 Manager?

[DEMdev]

Hi atoerper​,

Sorry, no. The UEM agent is backwards compatible with configuration files created with older Management Consoles, but it will not understand certain configuration settings from newer ones. The Upgrade User Environment Manager topic in the docs provides more information on the order in which to upgrade the different components.

[MattVicos]

We're looking to upgrade from UEM 9.2 to 9.5, we have a large number for pools, 30+ gold images. Would it be a good idea to upgrade the agent on a couple of gold images and recompose the pools first to 9.5, install the new console on a new machine until all the pools are updated to 9.5 before upgrading the old 9.2 console server?

[DEMdev]

Hi MattVicos,

In general we'd recommend a big bang upgrade of all agents, but (having reviewed the code changes between 9.2 and 9.5) I don't see any issues temporarily running with a mix of 9.2 and 9.5 agents while you're performing a rolling upgrade.

Upgrading the Management Console before having upgraded all your agents is a bit trickier. If you can ensure that your "9.5 configuration share" is only accessed by 9.5 agents, and that users logging on to a "9.5 pool" will never log on to a "9.2 pool" anymore, you should be OK. However, if 9.2 agents could encounter 9.5 configuration or 9.5 profile archives, that might result in some strange behavior. Nothing really bad, I think, but not a scenario that would be officially supported.

[MattVicos]

Thanks the quick response and helpful information. Looking at the upgrade path it looks like the only recommended path from 9.2 is to 9.3 then 9.3 to 9.5 so a two step approach. see link below.

VMware Product Interoperability Matrices

I'll think I'll leave upgrading the console and configuration share until all the agents have been upgrade to be on the safe side, can you confirm we'll be able to do a rolling upgrade of the 9.2 agent to 9.3.

[DEMdev]

A UEM upgrade only removes the old bits, and installs the new ones – there are never any data migration steps or anything like that. So, although for UEM 9.5 we officially only tested upgrades from 9.3 and 9.4, there's no problem directly upgrading from 9.2 either.

I'm very much a stickler for only recommending approaches that are officially supported (as illustrated in my previous response :-), but there's no need to take the two step upgrade approach here. However, in case you'd prefer to do so: it's also perfectly fine to do a rolling upgrade from 9.2 to 9.3.

[MattVicos]

Ok thanks, we'll go for a rolling upgrade from 9.2 to 9.5 for the agents then once complete we'll upgrade the console/configuration share and finally upload the new .admx files.

Finally can you confirm the 9.5 agent install/upgrade doesn't have any installation/uninstallion order regarding other VMware agent Horizon, App Vol etc and can be treated in a standalone manner.

[DEMdev]

Finally can you confirm the 9.5 agent install/upgrade doesn't have any installation/uninstallion order regarding other VMware agent Horizon, App Vol etc and can be treated in a standalone manner.

I'm not sure, sorry. UEM itself doesn't care (apart from requiring a license file unless installed on Horizon), but I think there are some potential issues if you (un)install software while the App Volumes agent is installed?

[sjesse]

There is a documented install order, so I'd follow that. In general if I have to update any of the agents, I uninstall all of them and reinstall them.

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